


Lost Property

by SandwichesYumYum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-08-15 17:31:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8065870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandwichesYumYum/pseuds/SandwichesYumYum
Summary: Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth. Modern AU. A short, multi-chapter piece.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With my thanks to Nurdles.

 

Brienne finishes logging in yet another mobile phone, making a note of the dog-shaped helium balloon floating above a cake, celebrating a fifth nameday in the picture that serves as a lock screen. Despite it being the fourteenth she's had to record this morning, she shows the same care as she did for the first as she packs it into a small plastic bag, making sure the label that details when and where it was found is showing.

Once it is placed in the proper cubby on the shelving system, ensuring it can be located with ease, the basket for phones is left empty, so she pushes it aside and pulls over the small trolley containing a selection of abandoned walking aids and umbrellas. One of the latter immediately catches her eye, but as ever, she works through the three that fit into the former category first. A lost umbrella is a mere inconvenience, and only then if it is actually raining; a missing walking stick could be much more troublesome for those passengers who happen to misplace them.

The last of the three is quite distinctive and, having seen that it was handed in less than an hour ago, Brienne decides to chance an announcement, in case its owner is still in the station. It is well made, if of relatively low value, and the rubber foot is quite worn, showing that it is likely very much needed. She checks the light on the microphone is out and it being so, presses the button and speaks into it. "Passenger announcement. A folding walking stick with a pink and black floral design was found on platform twelve a short time ago. The handle is inscribed with a name. If it is yours, please contact a nearby member of the station staff or go to the Customer Service Kiosk in the middle of the main concourse and we will return it to you. Thank you."

She shudders when she lets the button go, as she inevitably does whenever she ends this kind of short speech. Her job allows her the kind of anonymity she craves when she is doing something as simple as walking down the street, and this subterranean room, stuffed to the gills with all kinds of lost items, has become a haven for her. Knowing her voice is reverberating throughout this labrynthine station leaves her feeling exposed every time she ventures to allow it to be heard, but more often than not it is worth it, if owners and property are reunited as soon as can be. In fact, it is now a truth that these tiny acts of kindness, of safekeeping and returning items large and small, have given Brienne’s work, which others might think tedious, great meaning to her. If she rather fell into this job before college, she has since grown to love it.

Brienne leans out of the window and, finding the hallway empty, sits back down again. “It’s quiet this morning, Otto,” she mutters to the grotesque, mounted bear head that has been hanging on the wall for at least ten years, or so she has been told, just out of sight of the hatchway and any members of the public who might find taxidermy as innately unsettling as Brienne does herself. As she would expect, Otto does not reply. He just hangs there with patches of his fur long gone and the look in glass eyes as baleful as ever as his endless wait for his owner goes on. Brienne sighs and pulls the blue wire trolley yet nearer, reaching over to pluck out the umbrella that had briefly captured her attention before.

She only has time to mentally note how weighty it is before she shudders again, cold seeming to trickle down her spine. She wheels her chair back and holds the item vertically in front of her, almost dropping it as she sees a missing ruby eye, her intial burst of instinct confirmed. This is no replica. Quickly, she tosses it onto her desk, unwilling to touch it for longer than she has to. Brienne knows exactly who this umbrella belongs to; it has been seen on the news often enough. And if the urban myths circulating about it, and its owner, are even remotely true, this isn’t just an umbrella. It is a murder weapon.

She grabs the frame of the desk and yanks herself closer, then accessing her keyboard awkwardly to find the number she needs, her arms arched over the offending item so as not to come into contact with it. She has no intention of waiting for it to be claimed. She’ll pay for it to be couriered over to Lannister Inc. herself if it will get it out of here sooner. Even putting the alleged history of this umbrella aside, the workmanship is so unique and costly that it is unmistakable. All she needs in this case is a verbal confirmation of ownership to proceed.

Gaining this proves less easy than she may have wished. For the better part of half an hour, her call is shuffled from one person to the next; all of the voices growing icily polite as they shunt her on to yet another department when she says where she is calling from. But then, Brienne wouldn’t expect a person working where she does to get any respect from a mere janitor at this particular global corporation, and she has patience enough to bear it. Finally, she gets through to a youthful man with a friendly voice, which is wavering at the point of fully breaking. “Jaime Lannister’s office. Josmyn Peckledon speaking!”

Brienne hears his efforts to keep his words pitched at some kind of level and it makes her smile. “Hello, Josmyn Peckledon. My name is Brienne Tarth and I work in the Lost Property Department of KL Central Station. I believe Mr Lannister misplaced an item of his this morn-”

“His umbrella?” The excited interjection ends on a squeak, and Brienne muffles her mouth with her fingers to stop the soft laughter that threatens to escape her. 

Whatever his employer’s reputation, Brienne can’t help but immediately warm to the young man, caught as he is in the midst of his growing pains. “Yes.”

“I was so worried about it! He never lets it out of his sight! Honestly, there are people around here who say he sleeps with the thing!” No sooner has he said that last than his good sense seems to catch up with him. “Oh, I didn’t mean that to sound –“

“It’s fine, Josmyn,” Brienne reassures him. “Office gossip isn’t my concern. Mr Lannister’s umbrella is.”

“You won’t tell him I said that, will you? I mean, I think he'd be okay with it. He's the best boss ever, but I really need this job.”

Brienne wonders at the youngster's description of his superior and quickly decides that his age might mean his sample group has been on the small side. “Your secret is safe with me, Josmyn.”

“Thanks, Ms Tarth,” he says gratefully. “Mr Lannister has just ended a call. I’ll put you through. Please hold!” Brienne is about to say goodbye, but the corporate world apparently waits for no man, nor any woman, and her ears are yet again assaulted by a muzak version of a song which, but an hour ago, she would swear she remembers having loved. Trying to ignore the sound of pan pipes, she wonders if Josmyn Peckledon is being employed for his obviously cheery disposition or his youth. Given the lower minimum wage for those aged under 21 and Lannister Inc.’s known propensity for hoarding coin, she is just about concluding it must be the latter when another voice cuts in. 

“That was quick.”

Brienne starts in surprise at the sudden statement. “I’m sorry?”

“My assistant tells me you are Brienne Tarth of the Lost Property Department of KL –“

“Yes,” she confirms. “I am.”

“And I am Jaime Lannister. You have my umbrella?”

“Yes.”

“Then I should commend you on how quickly you’ve called me about it. Good customer service is a rare beast, these days.” Brienne pulls the reciever away from her head for a moment in confusion, the prickle on the back of her neck at an old nickname that took years for her to shake off, or at least learn to ignore, mixed with her astonishment at a man reviled throughout Westeros having anything approaching manners. But if his tone is warm, perhaps even appreciative of her having contacted him, it is a first impression which fails to last more than a few seconds at the outside; for as she warily places the phone against her ear again, deep honey gives way to something much drier. “Though the way this conversation is going, it’s beginning to sound less swift and more like a miracle.”

"Excuse me?"

"You are excused, though I'm not sure what for. Any slowness of mind is not something you can help."

"I -" 

Words temporarily fail Brienne. Slowness of mind? She knows the rich generally do not have to pretend to the manners that ordinary people use to navigate their lives, but Jaime Lannister seems to lack the ability to hold onto even the thinnest shade of civility for more than a couple of sentences.

"Yes?" 

This pointed utterance brings Brienne out of her tailspin of swiftly burgeoning impatience at the man. If he will make no more than a passing effort at having decent manners, their absence is a fault that _can_ be helped and it is one of which she has never been accused. She picks up the the card she had gingerly tied to the handle during the wait to get through to his office and reads the pertinent details out loud. "Mr Lannister, your umbrella was found beside seat 16D on first class coach 3AT4, which was a part of the second express service from Crackclaw Point into KL Central this morning."

"I am aware of the service I take into the City every single working day. Do you always speak by rote? Is it by choice or necessity?"

Unwilling to admit that, given the option, she would rarely choose to speak at all, Brienne decides to simply bypass the question, as well as the feeling that she is being needled on purpose. "If you can, it would be useful if you could tell me some identifying mark that only you would know."

"On an umbrella that has spent more than its fair share of time on the evening news?" The observation is dry, yet it is also unarguable, and Brienne is struggling to think past a missing right eye when Lannister supplies the solution himself. "The name would be best, I think. It's quite small, so you might not have seen it. Assuming you can read, have a look under the crook. About where the lion's balls would be."

Brienne is close to grinding her teeth and given that she wouldn't admit this unusual oversight on her part to him if she were threatened with pulled fingernails, her examination begins before he finishes speaking. She finds herself staring at a tiny, deeply stamped word, just where he said it would be, even as he is saying it. "And that name is?"

Her mind is screaming at her that there is something desperately off about the name when she hears it too, a breath in her ear. "Oathkeeper."

Brienne lowers the handle gently back to the desk. "That is correct."

"I know."

Brienne glances up at the ceiling tiles as if searching for answers, for a second convinced that Lannister has been sent by some higher power solely to try her, but she gets a grip soon enough. "I can arrange for it to be sent over to you this afternoon."

"Let's not trust to your abilities at writing as well as reading. No. I’ll send someone over later on today."

"As you wish, ser," Brienne grinds out, but Lannister seems to be gone already, and she shakes her head, looking at the sorry head of a bear in incredulity as she drops the handset onto its cradle. "I don’t know what you think, Otto, but he might be just as bad as everybody says," she mutters whilst she does so, only to immediately realize that the phone is still half off the hook. With a grimace, Brienne slams it into place, hoping that her comment went unheard; though she doesn't suppose it matters as she forcibly turns her mind to the next umbrella. She is sure worse things are said about Jaime Lannister on a daily basis, and it is unlikely he'll hold any concern for such a minor slight from the likes of her.

The next hour passes in haze of cuddly toys and a myriad of other lost things, but then she gets a call from the Customer Service Kiosk in the main station. Someone has turned up to claim the floral walking stick, so she closes and secures the window and makes sure to leave the sign that says _'Back in 10 minutes'_ in clear view, though the way today has been going she doesn't suppose that anyone will notice her absence in the first place.

The walking stick is returned to the granddaughter of its owner, who declares Brienne 'utterly wonderful' for having saved her from any further pushing of a wheelchair, which she says makes her elderly relative decidedly crotchety when it bangs into shop doors. There is more hugging than Brienne is generally used to, but she bears it as well as she can, sharing a relieved smile with those who work in the kiosk when the young woman finally leaves.

Her journey out from the office was made swiftly by neccesity, but Brienne takes her return a little more slowly. If she loves the room she works in, up here there is daylight, and she eases her pace for a few seconds to take in the grand marble columns and the sun streaming in through the iron and glass roof that sweeps over the whole space in a single vast and elegant arc. But soon enough she is making her way back beneath the earth, and she keeps her head down as she passes passengers by, knowing full well that it is the best way to pretend their stares don't exist.

She only lets her face rise once she turns the corner near the Lost Property Department. Her feet move three more steps before she comes to an unsteady halt, staring at the man leaning nonchalantly against the wall next to the window. She gapes at the real and disturbingly perfect form of Jaime Lannister, who looks at her appraisingly too before pushing himself away from the wall, his voice echoing in the white-tiled corridor. "‘I don’t know what you think, Otto, but he might be just as bad as everybody says.’ What _did_ Otto think, I wonder?"

It takes Brienne a full ten seconds to react, then lurching over towards the office door while she searches in what is inevitably the wrong trouser pocket for her keycard. "Otto is not one to share his views on our passengers, Mr Lannister," she says, finding that slip of plastic, which she successfully swipes through the lock on the second attempt. "I'll be with you in a moment." She slams the door shut behind her and turns to the left, sending Otto a look of desperation that she fancies might be shared by her loyal companion. Why would he have sent himself? Brienne hopes that Mr Lannister has not decided it is worth making a complaint about her after all. She has never had one on her employment record.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Brienne steps over to her desk, reaching over it to remove the sign. She unlocks and opens the glass window, sliding it until one of the glass panels sits fully behind the other. She is just about to welcome Jaime Lannister in the way she would absolutely anyone, when he appears in front of her, draping his arm casually onto the wooden ledge. "Would Otto share his views with me, do you think?"

Brienne can't help herself. As much as she tries to keep her gaze steady, it flickers to her most constant companion and back again. "I very much doubt it," she says, her voice tight as she takes her seat. "I have never known him to with anybody, either staff or public." She grabs the clipboard that hangs on a hook by the window and places it in front of her, hurriedly dislodging the pen to circle the type of item he is here to claim. "And I’m afraid he isn’t available to speak to you right now."

A sharp burst of laughter drags her attention upwards again, and she finds Lannister grinning down at her. “That's a _lie_. I'm guessing, but I think that's a lie.”

Brienne folds her hands on the desk, looking down at them as she fights the urge to smile herself. “It truly isn't.”

"I _see_ ," he drawls, though there’s no way he can have any idea about Otto. "So, can I have my umbrella?"

"There is a form to fill out," she explains briskly, pleased to be able to fall back upon her normal efficiency. "And I'll have to see some ID, if you have any with you."

Lannister looks appalled at the suggestion that he would need it. "Really? ID?"

"I'm afraid so, though if you don't have it with you we can just fill out a secondary form."

"No, that's fine," he says, digging into the inside right pocket of his jacket. "Will a work pass do?" he asks, handing it over. "It's all I have on me right now."

Brienne nods and, after spending just a moment wondering how he manages to look almost as well-formed in a grainy photo and settling on his probably having a hideous portrait in an attic somewhere, she writes the details in on the bottom of the obligatory claim form before placing both the pass and the clipboard on the ledge in the hatchway. "If you could just fill in your details at the top?"

Mr Lannister nods and starts to write, though with a touch of awkwardness which cannot be explained by the tie linking the pen to the clip alone. Brienne immediately finds it fascinating. He turns the board about, holding it in place with his right hand and curling his left arm around it to fill the form in. She can't help but wonder if it is another one of his apparent quirks, rather like his umbrella, that he would go to the trouble of writing with one hand when the more able is sitting in plain sight, occupied only with the gentle tap of a forefinger against paper.

She is so absorbed by his labours that she fails to notice when she herself becomes an object of sudden and furious attention; harsh words, controlled and quiet, lashing out at her, seemingly out of nowhere. "What? Have you never seen a man writing before? Do so few venture to visit the cave of the troll who keeps their property safe that this is somehow extraordinary?"

Her back thumps against her seat as her eyes snap to his in shock. Jaime Lannister is obviously angry with her, if but for a moment, his eyes fluttering shut. Slowly, he breathes in and exhales. Then he looks at her again. When he speaks, Brienne's mind is in such a confusion that she cannot work out if the regret now plastering his features is real or nothing of the sort. "I'm sorry. That was unworthy of me. You have shown me kindness today." 

"It was nothing, ser,” Brienne says quietly, willing to placate the man if it will see him gone at best speed. “I just,” she gestures briefly to the hand holding the pen, “you are not left-handed. I see people write often, as it happens,” she says, with a hint of an edge, “and you are _not_ left-handed. I'm sorry if I offended you."

At length he answers, though it doesn't come until after long moments of quizzical appraisal of Brienne that makes her feel small. "You didn't. And you're not wrong," he eventually offers, though Brienne hears a thread of something she can't quite define in it. Mr Lannister finishes his signature with a flourish, if one that still seems ill-coordinated to her, slipping the pen behind the clip before he says anything more. "Again, I apologize," he says, with a genuine warmth which strikes a strange chord of truth in Brienne. He hands the clipboard in to her, a sardonic smile flashing her way. "I mislike being under scrutiny, for some reason." Brienne feels her mouth drop open as the obvious reason for his fleeting burst of very real antipathy sinks in. While she checks over the form, she considers that whatever his actions, the constant pressure of media attention may well be a source of extreme stress. She doesn't understand that she is mulling that over, unmoving, until a wry question comes her way. "So, is this the part where I get my umbrella?"

Brienne shoots up to her feet like a soldier snapping to attention, her voice unnaturally bright. "One Oathkeeper, coming right up!" An eyebrow that must surely be plucked on a daily basis to be that flawless rises, telegraphing amusement more than any words could, and Brienne winces at her ineptitude as she turns to step over to the racking behind her. 

Her unexpected attempt to sound like a teenager working in a fast food joint may have been the object of some fun, but then it gets worse when she finds she is simply unable to lift Oathkeeper with anything other than her fingertips, the reputation of this inanimate object so bleak that it must appear that she is trying to carry it without touching it at all. 

Its owner finds no end of mirth in this, though it is supressed to a variety of facial twitches. Once his jaw appears to be firmly back under control, Lannister asks a question. "Do you really believe I killed a man with my umbrella, Ms Tarth?" 

"I..." Brienne falls quiet as she tries to work out if that would be possible, and ends up grasping the silver end and blood red folds of material, laying the handle on the ledge when she decides she has no idea.

"Seems a bit impractical, don't you think?" Lannister says, rolling the handle back and forth the once and watching her wrist twist with the movement. But then he looks squarely into her eyes again. "I can assure you, I didn't own Oathkeeper in my youth. And even if I had, wouldn't you be holding it by the murdery bit? Stick them with the pointy end, as I believe our Northern cousins would say."' 

He chuckles softly when Brienne drops the aforementioned pointy end as if scalded by it. The umbrella slides away from Brienne and into the outside world; momentarily gone from her sight, only to reappear, the lion being held level with Jaime Lannister's face. "You won't get rid of me that easily, old friend," he says softly, then sliding Oathkeeper between his right arm and his torso. For Brienne, it brings to mind the knights in old movies, sheathing their swords after battle. Or perhaps brigands might be more appropriate in this case, Brienne thinks, unsure if it is uncharitable as his parting shot proves less irksome than most of that which has come before.

"Thank you, Ms Tarth."

"Good day to you, Mr Lannister." It is her standard goodbye to those who come here, and the nod that is returned may well be no less so. Then, with the mildest of smiles sent her way, Jaime Lannister is gone. Brienne resists the inexplicable urge to stick her head out of the window to watch him go and simply listens as his echoing footsteps fade and then disappear. She is happy enough to relegate this odd encounter, one of the sort that only rarely pops up in her working life, to memory. It's not one she'll share; if she has found it infuriating and curious and has been left with the distinct impression that Jaime Lannister is not quite everything that he seems to be, her relating his calling her a cave troll at work parties would be humorous for everyone but herself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With further thanks to Nurdles, who is very patient with me!

 

Brienne wipes away the sleep from the corner of her right eye and then digs into the pocket of her regulation, hi-vis overcoat, burrowing past a pack of tissues and a packet of mints to snag her ever-errant keycard. She lets herself into the Lost Property Office, juggling the card and her cardboard coffee cup while she shucks the jacket off to hang it on the back of the door. Yawning, she walks to the left, past the most recently deposited baskets of the lost, paying them little heed as she switches on her computer.

But as the rickety old machine sputters into life, her brain does too, and she slowly turns on the spot to stare in sheer disbelief at the small collection of newly-gathered umbrellas and walking sticks from the morning rush hour. 

She finds herself looking into the single ruby eye of a lion.

For upwards of a minute, she simply stands there gaping at it, her waking mind struggling to comprehend what she is seeing; or, more importantly, why she is seeing it at all. Eventually, she shakes her head and places her coffee cup on her desk so that her hands are free when she plucks the folded list of item information from within the folds of the umbrella. She smooths the small piece of paper out over her palm. "Seat 16D...first class coach 3...Otto, this is _exactly_ the same place he lost it yesterday!"

She turns to the bear, whose opinion on this unusual circumstance will remain forever obscure. Otto just stares sadly into the mid-distance between them.

Sighing, Brienne takes her seat and picks up the wire waste basket from nearby. Thankfully, the Night's Watch, as they so like to call themselves, have neglected to leave the wrappers of their usual burger meal here overnight. Brienne uses a pencil to ruffle through the discarded notes from yesterday, just in case, fishing out the blessedly ketchup-free one on which she'd written the number of Lannister Inc. the day before. Replacing the bin, she takes a sip of her coffee before picking up the phone. She may well need that pick-me-up before speaking to Jaime Lannister again.

It is a relief that it is far easier for her call to reach its destination by asking for Josmyn Peckledon than it is for his boss. She is only put on hold three times before that distinctive voice rings out at her once more; today perhaps a shade more gruff, but not without the odd squeak or two.

"Jaime Lannister's office! Josmyn Peckledon speaking!"

"Hello, Josmyn," Brienne says. "This is Brienne at KL Central."

"Hi, Brienne. He didn't do it again, did he? He's been in his office since before I arrived!"'

"Yes. I’m afraid he did."

"You don’t think he’s ill, do you? I hope not. He's the best!"

"I wouldn’t know," she says with a smile she hopes he can hear, albeit that she is still certain that Josmyn's view of his boss might be a touch rose-tinted. She is just about to suggest that she simply leave a message, though that fleeting idea is stymied when the enthusiastic PA places her on hold again without delay. Yesterday's pan pipes have become today's chimes, though they have no more musical charm than the former. She is just about consigning another piece of popular music she once liked to the dustbin when, to her relief, it is cut off.

"It would seem I left my umbrella behind again."

"You did," Brienne quickly confirms, wondering if it is one more of Jaime Lannister's peccadilloes that he feels the need to leap into conversations at full tilt in order to try and throw people off balance. Determined that he won't do so with her today, Brienne just waits to see what comes next, time slowing to a trickle, the silence hanging like a thin thread between them.

That thread snaps, Lannister's need to speak outweighing her own, which to Brienne fails to serve as a surprise of any sort. "You're a talkative one, aren't you?"

"I am not." Her blunt statement buys her a laugh that could be mocking, or equally not at all. She cannot make him out, and Brienne feels the heat of ire beginning to rise in her cheeks at her own confusion at the man. But even if she is certain he is not the sort to have lost his precious umbrella on consecutive days, she cannot prove it. So she takes a calming breath. "Mr. Lannister, I only called to let you know that your umbrella is here and -"

"I assume Oathkeeper made it to your office with the proper number of eyes?"

Without thinking, she glances it, and is promptly niggled at her own responding to such a question as if she were one of his employees at Lannister Inc. "It did, if one is the proper number for a lion."

There is a distinct hum on the other end of the line before that entirely unneeded confirmation is recognised. "He is no ordinary lion. But then, neither am I."

The arrogance of the man fairly drips off that simple statement and Brienne lifts her eyes to the far off heavens before trying to cut it to the quick. "Ordinary or _not_ , Mr Lannister, it is here and safe, if you want to send somebody over for it."

"No," is his reply, too obviously lacking concern for her opinions in the first place. "I'll swing by myself, at some point. I'll see you then."

Grimacing to herself at the thought of another face-to-face encounter with this particular customer, one she isn't sure she wants, Brienne grudgingly mutters, "I guess you will." Though it turns out that he can't hear her, the dull tone of a definitively and properly ended call the only thing to acknowledge her.

She replaces the handset with care, mulling over whether or not Jaime Lannister is always like this. In spite of herself, she’d spent an hour or two awake in the night, their conversations from yesterday replaying in her head. He had been just as rude as the image that sweeps across her television screen from time to time suggested he might be, but to Brienne, there was something about it all that didn't quite ring true. This brief contact hasn't changed that view one iota, but if there is anything behind the Lannister mask, she knows she will not be the one to see it. So after a few minutes spent quietly sipping her coffee, she pulls herself together and gets on with her day.

It is a quiet morning, with perhaps a half a dozen people coming by, none of them with requests that prove too difficult to fulfil; only the one gentleman taking any time to claim his phone because his model is so popular and the battery was discharged when he lost it in the first place. Batteries often drain in storage, even if the devices using them are turned off. Brienne doesn't know why, but makes sure to tell customers to check on the state of them when they are reclaimed.

As lunchtime approaches, more people arrive, though the queue never gets above four people, and when a familiar face swans by to take a place at the end of it, there are but two. It does not take Brienne long to reunite the intervening plush dragon and leather satchel, both of them notably careworn, with their grateful owners.

When it is his turn, a small, misshapen object is placed on the ledge before he actually appears. And it would seem that Jaime Lannister has a knack for knowing how to cut, even when he isn't aware he is doing it. Brienne virtually recoils from the window, though the man who promptly steps into view doesn't notice, occupied as he is by wiggling the little figurine on the spot. "I've brought you a gift," he tells her. "I'm told this is a troll."

"I know that," Brienne whispers.

"And I know you are _not_ a troll," he says, settling the creature in place. It wobbles on its gnarled feet. Only then does he look up and even though her heart is beating like a drum, Brienne can see more than a hint of warmth in his gaze."I just wanted to make that clear to you."

"Thank you, Mr Lannister," she says, moving no closer, nor any further away. Instead, she gently reaches out and picks up the troll between thumb and forefinger by a scruff of lurid hair, swinging her arm out to the right and letting go when her hand reaches the approximate area above her target. The whole time, she doesn't look away from curious eyes.

They listen to the small gift bounce on crumpled paper, Lannister's consternation at the gesture, if indeed there is any, limited to a few rapid blinks. "Did you just drop it straight into a bin?"

Brienne lets her hand fall back to her side. "Yes."

His gaze turns sharp and measuring, a mind she doesn't know enough to consider, hidden behind that astonishing, misleading facade, working at full tilt. "You've been gifted one or two before. And not by way of apology."

"Perhaps," she says, her throat suddenly dry, unwilling to admit to him that his guess is too good. That when a 'joke' at her expense by a certain section of the staff had gone badly for them, flattery had given way to outright contempt, flowers to trolls and all other manner of miniature beasts; they were left everywhere she might go for a while, to make sure she would never forget exactly what she was. Brienne swallows and glances at the bin before addressing her customer with as level a voice as she can muster. "An apology. Is that what it was?"

"A poor one, clearly."

Brienne brushes needlessly at her trousers. "So. You're here for Oathkeeper?"

"You do have a tendency to state the obvious, don't you?"

That apology didn't last long, she thinks, huffing as she turns to the racking to collect what is probably the world's most infamous umbrella. "I've heard I _tend_ to speak by rote," she says, holding it out and resting the handle on the ledge.

It is gone in a flash, whipped out into the corridor, only for it to be thrown up in the air and caught at the other end. Barely a breath passes before she finds herself looking again at a ruby eye again, as it gently travels back in her direction. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I thought a little bump might knock you out of it. See?" Jaime Lannister says, barely touching the lion to the thin hair on her forehead. _"Bump."_

He might be smiling, but she is not, this second friendly gesture aggravating her more than she would like, one compounding the effects of the other. She swots the lion's head away. He might think this a mere bit of fun, but Brienne feels raw. Tired of being the joke. She will not be his. "Mr. Lannister, that is not appropriate behaviour. Technically speaking, I could have you arrested for assault."

Oathkeeper retreats with more speed than it had come toward her, swiftly being tucked into what could well be its customary place, the crook hanging over her customer's right forearm. "For that?" Lannister asks, with no lack of amusement. "Are you going to?"

"No," Brienne admits, picking up her clipboard and sliding it firmly onto the ledge, deciding that she'll copy over the details of his work pass from yesterday's form after he's gone to quicken the pace. "But just because I am a mere public servant, you do not have free rein to behave towards me however you wish."

"I meant you no harm," Jaime Lannister says, picking up the pen and starting to write just as awkwardly as he had the day before, his right elbow kicking up and settling on the end of the form to keep the curl on bottom corner flat.

Brienne is sure he isn't lying, his tone free of deception, but though her choice is not to take any action under the circumstances, she cannot let it lie. "That's not the point." For some reason she can't define she says it to the face of the smaller lion whose bottom jaw teeters on the edge of the clipboard.

The pen stops moving. A face rises up. "Then what is, pray tell?"

"You can't go around treating people whatever way you want to. It doesn't matter who you happen to be."

"And that's what I was doing?"

"If you won't think of others, will you not at least think of your own reputation?"

"My reputation?" he asks quietly, only to drop the pen and turn away. He stands in the middle of the corridor, his shoulders unmoving and squared, though he laughs. Even if it echoes off cold, white tiles, making it rounder, taking the cutting harshness from it, it is still the bitterest sound Brienne has ever heard.

He clears his throat as he spins back, and there is no humour left in him. Brienne suspects her question had sparked none to begin with. "Oh. My _reputation_ ," he says, his voice flat, his nostrils flaring. Again, the pen is in his left hand, though now it's journey over foolscsap paper is markedly erratic and louder. Percussive and hard. "Do you mean as a man alleged to have killed another with an umbrella," he grinds out, pausing to glance at his arm, then at Brienne, "most would say _this_ umbrella? And then was found sitting in the dead man's seat, casually using his body as a footstool?" The pen's nib skips to the next box, leaving a faint trace of its path before he writes again. "Or as the man who was caught by the press towards the end of a summer long beach romp with his own sister?" Another box. The line the pen leaves in its wake this time is slightly darker and a touch crooked. "Perhaps you are referring to the man who is heir to the Lannister Inc. fortune, where Inc. is commonly believed to mean 'incorporating anything they damn well please, leaving a trail of broken human wreckage in their wake'?"

He stops writing and straightens from his writing position, his look defiant. "I can only assume you have some kind of first aid certificate hanging up on the wall in there," he says, his eyes shifting, taking in what little it can of her working environs from where he is. Brienne watches his view of it morph like quicksilver into blindingly obvious distaste. Perhaps too obvious, though she cannot be sure. "You seem like the sort. So you must know about triage." He leans against the hatchway, the wood there digging in somewhere in the middle of his ribcage as he quietly asks, "Tell me, Ms Tarth, just which part of my precious 'reputation' do you think I ought to be attempting to resuscitate, at this point?"

His gaze drops and hers follows it. Brienne stares at her arms in confusion, not knowing when she'd crossed them, almost defensively, in front of her. She laces them together more tightly and stands tall. "It is not my place to judge."

"And yet there you stand, doing just that." 

It is said with complete calm and it rocks Brienne, though she tries not to show it. All she really knows of this man is what she's seen in the papers or on television, neither of which she has ever lent any great credence to as sources of information; and last night's sleep had only come after she had finally decided that she believed Jaime Lannister's claim that he had never killed anyone with Oathkeeper. It is, to own it, one of the more ridiculous things she's ever heard, so it stands to reason that the other stories told about him might be overblown or fabricated.

Her musings are interrupted by a dry voice, each word clipped with a politeness that slices. "Oh, don't you dare soften on me, Ms Tarth. That wouldn't do. After all, some of what I've just said is absolutely _true_." Stunned, Brienne merely watches as he lifts the pen one last time, his signature spooling out like wail across the wrong field. It ends with a distinct full stop, and Brienne doesn't bother to correct him for his mistake as he stows the pen away behind the silver clip to briskly hold out the clipboard to her. "There. Are we done?" He stares at her and Brienne is staggered that a green that had felt so warm in haphazard apology, like sunlight filtering through leaves on a summer's day, can turn so chill. 

She takes the proffered board, dropping her eyes to it to avoid the winter in his. Yesterday his letters had been ill-written, yet betraying much practice. Today they form an indecipherably angry scrawl, too spiky to be that of the metaphorically meandering spider, and heavy too, the weight of unspoken rage funnelled through the nib of an undeserving pen. She tries to remember when it was during his diatribe of personal faults that this rage had caused a small tear, a jagged puncture in the paper, but Brienne cannot. She had not heard it.

"I think...," she starts to say, looking up from the clipboard. And there he stands. Not the man with an incongruous toy, attempting to apologize in his own way and trying to work out why it fails to be accepted with even a modicum of grace, instead of taking immediate offence. 

This is the Jaime Lannister Brienne has seen in the newsheets. Closed away. Untouchable. Apart. Above everything and everyone else. _Ugly_. Brienne hates just thinking the word and shudders inside, appalled that she would ever consider applying it to anyone else. But even if it is an absurdity that someone such as she would attach it to the man in front of her, there is some truth in it. This mask, which he has thrown over himself like an obscuring sheet, is indeed flawless, but it shows only arrogance, entitlement and plethora of other characteristics she would rather not come to know. He is undeniably beautiful, but his mask _is_ ugly, and she wonders just how much of it is a lie.

Brienne eventually realizes that she hasn't answered him, that he is waiting for her. She shakes herself out of her thoughts and taps her forefinger on the form. "Yes, Mr Lannister. We're done." 

"Then it only remains for me to thank you for your service," he says with a cool nod. "Ms Tarth."

"Good...," Brienne begins, but he is already gone. "Good day to you, Mr Lannister," she says quietly to the tiles across the hall.

Brienne sits down with a thump, the clipboard hitting the edge of her desk and then sliding off to rest lopsidedly on her lap. She looks down at his anger, at how it had rolled across white paper as he listed his own failings, but it is impossible to discern the truths from the lies in the small piece of him that he left behind.

So she doesn't try, grabbing the folder of this week's claim forms and unclipping the used paper from the board. She copies what Jaime Lannister had scrawled over onto a fresh form and after transferring the details of his work pass from yesterday's one and filling in the official details, staples his anger behind the neater version. Brienne cannot be certain why she does this. She only knows that it feels right that his anger be hidden, even if he will never know it.

She smiles ruefully at herself as she stows the documents away, unable to work out why she would care in the first place. She is not one to pander to the whims of angry men, though she can't deny that his had been a strange sort, less aimed at her than himself, to her mind. It is all academic anyway, she thinks, shaking off the peculiar mood settling over her as a teenager arrives at the window, most likely for a misplaced phone. After what has happened today, she doubts she will ever see Jaime Lannister again.

Still, during a quiet spell an hour or so later, Brienne finds herself picking the troll out of the bin and stroking its hair between thumb and forefinger until it is standing up, leaving little spikes of fluff all over its head. She puts it on the desk next to her screen and it wobbles. Rather absent-mindedly, she takes a yellow sticky note and rolls it up, curling it over at one end and, naming her troll Jaime Lannister, Brienne threads her impromptu Oathkeeper into place over his right arm.

She leans back in her chair to inspect her handiwork and slowly shakes her head. It does not help. She cannot work him out.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With, as ever, my thanks to Nurdles.
> 
> Note: this chapter is the shortest of this fic. The next is, in contrast, the longest by far, so I hope that is okay. :)

"Ms Tarth."

"Mr Lannister."

"Did I forget Oathkeeper again? How very clumsy of me."

Brienne glares at the umbrella currently resting on her desk, its missing eye making it seem as if it is winking at her about a joke she doesn't even care to understand in the first place. "I must ask, ser. Is this some kind of test?"

"What?"

"Is this some kind of test? Because if it is, I don’t see the point of it."

Her bluntness only wins her the kind of slow, teasing laugh she suspects could be deployed by any vaguely attractive male contestant on ‘Pop Goes Westeros!’ to win thousands of phone votes from the more hormonal section of the audience. Not that it stands a chance of ever working with Brienne. "I'm not sure how effective I would be as a 'mystery customer'," he eventually points out, sounding far too pleased with himself.

His good humour is well-matched by her lack of it. Her patience is definitely fraying around the edges. "Then is this some kind of ongoing prank at my expense? Because it isn't funny."

"No. I -"

"Mr Lannister," Brienne says quickly, unwilling to be the subject of any more of his games, whatever their meaning, "I called to let you know that your umbrella is here, and will be kept securely until you come to retrieve it. That is, in fact, beyond what I am compelled to do contractually, or by my own sense of duty. Now if you will excuse me, I have work to do. Good day to you." 

Then she slams down the phone; twice, just to make certain of it, and glares at that as well. She even goes so far as to pick up a certain troll, depositing it back in the bin. If, after a few seconds, she feels a touch childish for acting in such a way, it is not as if she has really been impolite. So she pushes the feeling aside and gets to logging Oathkeeper into the system so that she can stow it away for the third day in a row. "If he keeps doing this, I'm in danger of seeing this blasted umbrella as much as I do you, Otto," she mutters as she places it back in the trolley next to a far less grand example of accessorising. Otto says nothing, but as she neatens the blue trolley with a slight squeak of wheels, an idea forms, so she decides to make a quick call before moving on to the assorted pile of baggage. 

It turns out that her call is more necessary than she could have anticipated. Quite how the large green rucksack she found underneath the rest of the suitcases wasn't handled by security is a mystery to her, though perhaps the nested cluster of camping saucepans and flight label attached to it were a clue to its harmlessness. In any case, the weight of far sturdier suitcases above had clearly had an effect on its contents, and Brienne finds her right trouser leg stained by what she hopes is shampoo as she leaves for an early lunch, the already putrid colour of them now simply indescribable. "At least whatever it is isn't burning," she says to herself as she swiftly covers the short walk home. 

It doesn't take her long to shower and in short order, Brienne is making her way back to KL Central in trousers that are almost as preposterous as the pair she'd just bundled into her washing machine. There is no need to hurry on the return journey, as the requirement that all rail employees be presentable in uniform is now met, insofar as it ever can be. Instead of heading back to the Lost Property Office, however, Brienne walks around to the far end of the station, taking her time in choosing which pastry and newspaper to buy at the franchise stands in this quieter area. 

She goes outside to sit on a bench next to a small waterfall, though the recent renovations have not yet reached this part of the station and the waterfall is a trickle from the green-encrusted beak of a kraken that is more like a small squid. Her coffee is as plain as she expects and likes, but her pastry turns out to be a disappointment, the filling more potato than anything else and the gravy thin, colourless, and filled with herbs that manage to impart no flavour. She is hungry though, so she eats it, afterwards nestling down within the confines of her bright jacket, warm weather be damned, determined to read her newspaper.

In truth, there is little there to interest her, yet she reads most of it. She learns that in the ‘Pop Goes Westeros!’ House, there is now a bitter feud between two of the contestants after the previous live show saw them both perform in virtually identical outfits. Given the vast coverage, it would seem to be similar in scale to the war of words between two sports teams being widely reported in the back pages, though that at least is over a player's broken leg. A 'power couple' from the movies are divorcing, though their pleas for privacy go unheard, with whole pages devoted to people giving their opinions on 'where it all went wrong' and endless analyses of what must be every public event they've attended for at least the last five years. 

When she finds herself reading that an unpassed salt cellar at a banquet two years past may have been the point at which the bell tolled for the pair in question, Brienne decides that she can stand no more of this type of news. And given that she has probably stayed away for long enough anyway, she heads into KL Central after a final glance up at the sun, depositing her newspaper into the recycling bin by the newsstand before she heads back underground.

As she draws closer to Lost Property her steps slow, and Brienne doesn't even realize she is holding her breath until it explodes from her lips in a kind of relief when she turns the corner to find the corridor outside of her office empty. She shakes her head at her own foolishness as she lets herself back in and hangs up her jacket.

“He complained that you weren’t here,” is the first thing that Pod says as he relinquishes her chair.

Brienne walks around him and slumps straight into it. “He’ll have to forgive me for having _lunch_ ,” she grouses, screwing up her pastry wrapper and throwing it at the waste bin with more force than is strictly required, given its close proximity. Still, the day continues to run to form, the thin waxpaper ball rolling over the rim and falling behind it. With a groan, she leans over the corner of the desk, fumbling blindly around to pick it up.

"He stayed for about half an hour, even while I was helping other people and everything. I think he was waiting for you." That last has an edge that might be interpreted as approving of Mr Lannister, and Brienne glances up at Pod warningly as she twists her arm to get to the wrapper, which has ended up under the desk. 

"I can't see why," she mutters darkly, dropping the paper into the bin and sitting back up again. In spite of herself, she momentarily leans back down to move the wrapper from its new resting place, over the head of the unlucky troll, though she doesn't go so far as to move the troll itself. "Unless he gets his kicks out of annoying me personally." 

"To be fair, this is pretty much the most annoyed I've ever seen you," Pod offers, though then he lifts his hand towards the ceiling. "Apart from that huge guy that time." He shudders in remembrance. "But he was something else."

"That he was," Brienne agrees warmly, sincerely glad young Pod hadn't been around to see her yesterday. She shrugs up at her friend, who never seems to mind taking her place if she needs to leave the station; though perhaps there is some self-interest in the gesture. “Thanks for covering for me.”

"Anytime," Pod says, pausing by the door. He looks back at her. "Any chance you could tell me-"

"I'm still thinking about it, Pod," Brienne says firmly, but smiling, as she can't blame him for trying. She throws out a hand in a gently shooing wave. "Shouldn't you be getting back to the main concourse now? Haven't you got customers to help?"

With an impish grin, Pod makes to go. "I probably should. I left Sandor in charge of my map display." 

The door closes behind him and Brienne stares at it in astonishment, wondering quite how the fearsome Mr Clegane, who is not renowned for his refined manners, has dealt with an hour and a half of giving hapless tourists directions to the theatre district. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for taking the time to help me with this, Nurdles. :)

"Can I buy you lunch?"'

"I...I'm sorry?" Brienne stutters, the leap from hideous muzak to entirely unexpected question taken in the blink of an eye. Sudden statements she has come to anticipate. This is something quite different.

"What for? I asked to buy you lunch."

"I'm not sure that would be appropriate."

Even Brienne can hear how prim and dismissive that is, but it doesn't seem to deter Mr Lannister and, if anything, he sounds positively chipper, despite the turbulent aspect of their previous encounters. "I wasn't going to drag you off for a five-course meal at the Keep, Ms Tarth. I was thinking something more along the lines of bringing you a roll. I wouldn't like to miss you again."

Brienne frowns. "Was there a problem with Podrick yesterday?"

"No. He was perfectly polite. He didn't even nearly drop Oathkeeper; unlike some I could name." Brienne is unable to stop herself sticking her tongue out at Mr Lannister's oft-rescued namesake, though the frighteningly coiffed figure on her desk doesn't take any notice, just as the man himself refers to her other, equally stoic companion. "Tell, me, is young Pod secretly Otto?"

"He is not."

"But he works with you?"

There is no reason for her to lie, though she speaks warily. She doesn't feel she should talk to anyone about her decision before Podrick himself, and even she is not yet wholly sure. "Not officially, though I have been offered a full-time assistant and I think he wants the spot."

A moment of silence passes. "You could do far worse, in the opinion of this mystery customer."

"Hilarious," Brienne says, meaning nothing of the sort. "In any case, I'm not sure if I want an assistant."

"So you want to keep Otto all to yourself?"

"Something like that," Brienne says, shifting her head to smile up at that bear's head. Raggedy and ugly he may be, but he has never failed to listen to her, through thick and thin.

"You like him, don't you?"

"Yes," Brienne says, curious to know if her smile at that had translated into her voice, but far less than willing to ask. She looks into badly chosen, mismatched glass eyes and replies. "He's good company."

"Are you vegetarian?"

The verbal tangent is again sudden, and Brienne shakes her head to herself before answering. "No."

"Then I'll see you at about the same time, Ms Tarth." The call ends and she would swear she could hear _him_ smiling as he does so, just before she drops the phone back into its sleeping place. Brienne spends a while just looking at the troll, whose rescue from the bin had felt inevitable yesterday afternoon, though she still has no idea why she'd done it. She plucks the miniature version of Oathkeeper from its podgy arms and straightens it. It had not borne its banishment to the bin as well as the smaller Jaime Lannister, who was apparently as unruffled by the experience as she would expect his more animated namesake to be.

"Why would _he_ want to bring me a roll?" she asks her newer, more fairweather friend as she returns his umbrella, in a slightly less crooked state. She remains unenlightened, but sets the issue aside to get on with her morning.

Soon after, there is a period of an hour or so when the queue outside her window never seems to drop below six people, though the claims are easily made, except for one poor man who is absolutely distraught when Brienne confirms that her Lost Property Office does not have his engagement sword. Brienne, having never heard of such a thing, is flummoxed by the request for a short time, but the customer's distress drives her to go through the small collection of antique and replica weaponry in her care in front of him, just to make sure. By the time the man leaves, sobbing into a tissue she gave him, having left the details for no less than seven different ways of contacting him should the sword show up, Brienne is beginning to think that the idea is actually quite sweet.

That whimsicality is driven right out of her by the next customer who is looking for his favourite pair of slippers, which turn out to be at the bottom of the shoe bin, which is, despite the extensive use of plastic bags, quite bad enough to knock any thoughts of sweetness out of the head of anyone. Brienne deals with that particular customer with more speed than perhaps she ought to, but he seems happy enough nonetheless.

Once everything dies down, Brienne settles into sorting her paperwork and making a couple of follow-up calls to those who had claimed items after a long period. It is important, she feels, to ensure that the right people have ended up with their property in their possession. 

She is just putting away the documents when a now familiar face appears at her window. "Did somebody order a roll?"

"Not as such," Brienne tells him, tidying the folders on the small shelves before she bothers to look up at him.

"Well, I've got one for you."

"Thank you," Brienne says politely, folding her arms in front her, yet again. She is sure he is up to something, and is willing to wait for the other shoe to drop.

She doesn't have to wait for long. A lazy smile curls across Jaime Lannister's face. "I got one for me as well."

Brienne slumps in her chair. "How nice for you." 

They fall into an awkward and silent stalemate at that point, regarding each other with wariness, though neither with any great ire. Brienne just isn't sure she wants to be the object of more of his brand of humour and she certainly doesn't feel that eating publicly with Jaime Lannister in her place of work would result in her making any more friends. Their looks alone are so disparate that she can almost feel a tide of small novelty beasts returning.

She cannot tell what he is thinking at all. She doesn't believe she could ever work him out. But whatever he is thinking, it seems to stop when he looks around him and then back at her. "Well?"

"Well _what?"_

Perhaps she may have been too blunt, but if anything, the smile on his face becomes warmer and more genuine. He lifts his right hand and sweeps his arm around the space in which he's standing. "Are you going to make me eat out here? In this dingy corridor?"

"Dingy?" Brienne rears up to her feet, huffing as she leans as far as she can out of the hatchway, which is only a little because of her desk, looking to the left and right. It's empty and she can't even hear any approaching footsteps, out of sight. She is willing to admit, if not out loud, that it isn't the cleanest of spaces either.

With a sigh, she rests her elbows on the ledge and stares at Jaime Lannister, again giving in to the inevitable. "There is an alternative," she tells him, "but I don't think that will be quite up to your standards either."

"Is it another corridor?" he asks, his grin becoming nothing short of cheeky. 

"No," she says, swiftly standing and sliding the window shut between them. She points to her left, but Lannister doesn't move, only shrugging at her in confusion which is completely false. She jabs her finger to the left again and speaks loudly through the window. _"Go and wait by the door."_

His smile turning triumphant, Jaime Lannister moves out of sight just as Brienne picks up and puts her sign that that says _'At lunch. For assistance, please ring bell'_ in full view. Once that is in place and the windows locked she moves through the Lost Property Office and into the area behind the last of the shelves, near said door. 

At first she moves away from it, but not for long. She will not risk her position for any kind of roll, no matter who brings it. So with an elongated, ear-splitting rattle, she pulls the huge internal shutters across and secures them, then opens the door to the corridor, waving Lannister in and to his right, though he doesn't immediately follow her directions. His face alight with curiosity, he steps through only to look to his left in some disappointment. "Members of the public are not permitted access to the lost property," Brienne says by way of explanation, pointing into the small area open to him. She suspects that he wanted to catch a glimpse of the fabled Otto, as it seems unlikely he would be in a position to need anything else in there.

His plan foiled, Lannister follows her directions, though in truth he cannot go far, and the area he finds himself in is obviously not what he expected. "This is an odd place to have lunch," he says, pacing around the small room, staring at the walls. "Don't you find the nursery rhyme characters off-putting?" Green eyes turn from a basic cartoon of a giant egg falling from the Wall.

Brienne shrugs. "Sometimes children get lost too, Mr Lannister. This area is safe, and all staff with access have been police-checked." An eyebrow cocks in clear self-reference. Jaime Lannister's personal history may be shady at best, but Brienne shakes her head. "I don't see any lost children in here right now, do you? It's a good place to wait for the relevant authorities. And to have lunch. And it's _not_ a corridor."

She points to the chairs lining the walls, but Lannister doesn't seem to notice, busy as he is leaning back and forth to take in a goat with a beard as dark as night. Then his gaze flickers about the images before settling on her. "They're not bad."

"Thank you."

If he is surprised that these pictures, however basic, are her work, he doesn't show it, except for a wry curl of his lips. "They're not that _good_ , either," he qualifies, retrieving a wrapped roll from the left hand pocket of his overcoat and holding it out to her. Brienne half-snatches it away as he waves his right hand at the mural on the wall at the end of the narrow room. "And if I may point out one small problem, there is no way a lion and a bear could fit into a claw-footed bathtub." 

"There's no way they'd get along either, but in any case, I don't think the _children_ mind," Brienne points out, sitting down with care and opening her mystery lunch with a rustle of overly thick brown paper. It screams artisanal sandwich bar, even more so when the rustic roll inside is revealed. It probably cost ten whole dragons, but given that it was Jaime Lannister's purchase, Brienne guesses that he likely still feels like he's slumming it a touch. She pries the dense bread open and stares down with a sigh. "What is this? Bacon and avocado?"

She looks up to find herself the subject of some mild amusement. "Trust me, Ms Tarth," Lannister says, sitting his own roll on his right palm and unwrapping it. Then, rather unceremoniously, he stuffs it into his mouth and rolls the wrapper gently between his palms, walking over to the bin and letting it fall softly in.

He comes back and sits opposite her, but having not taken note of the actual size of most of the chairs, the last few inches seem to take him by surprise and take the form of a sudden drop, rather than a graceful positioning. His head swings from side to side in alarm until he notices that almost all of the chairs are tiny, of the sort that would be found in a primary school.

"Children, remember?" Brienne whispers with some amusement, before chancing a bite of her roll. The bread is as dense as she'd feared, the peculiarity of the fashion in modern baking she often sees on weekend television surely proven in a bite of bread in which 'nutty' has tipped over into 'burnt'. 

Still, she thinks, she was brought up with proper manners, even if the man in front of her has been trying those to their limits of late. So she swallows the bread and tries not to grimace at the avocado, which she would much rather prefer in a salad. "It's not bad," she says. "Thank you."

Seemingly satisfied with that response to his oddball choice, Jaime Lannister tears a bite from the roll that had not left his mouth, chewing away happily in front of her.

They eat then and nothing is said, though Brienne finds herself slightly uncomfortable when she realizes that he is watching her, if without any sense of intrusion in the slightest. She doesn't suppose there is that much else to see in this small space that he hasn't already, but nonetheless she is not one for social occasions, and she is not used to eating with others. She does not do it often. So instead of looking at him in return, she lets her gaze wander about the room, to characters she had painted herself, to each of the small, unoccupied chairs and to the thin, dark carpet.

Eventually she finds herself looking at their knees, which are only about a couple of feet apart and pointing sharply upwards. She smiles to herself, thinking that this could not be a great deal more awkward for either of them if they were sitting on the floor. Jaime Lannister is not much shorter than herself and she feels like she is almost doubled over in place.

When she is most of the way through her roll and he is nearly done, having apparently enjoyed his purchase a touch more, Brienne sets her lunch aside on the paper it came in. If she has the opportunity to speak first, which is a shock to her, she feels she must do so. There is something she has to ask. "Mr Lannister. Why do you keep coming back?"

His chewing slows and after he swallows his mouthful of the bacon roll from Brienne's idea of the grain-based hells, he simply smiles at her. "I liked your voice."

"You liked my _what?"_

If those words leap out of Brienne with some force, they do not appear to ruffle Mr Lannister, his smile untroubled by so much as a twitch. "Your voice," he reaffirms. "I’ve been using this station for years – "

"That’s funny," Brienne interrupts, unable to keep the huge wave of suspicion pummelling her out of her words. "I thought you’d use a helicopter."

Jaime Lannister leans back against an image of a small octopus wearing boots and laughs, though it is a low thing, not made to mock. "Only for special occasions, Ms Tarth," he tells her in the end. "But as I was saying, I have been commuting through KL Central for years, and every so often I’d hear your voice. Over the tannoy system," he says, lifting his right hand and moving it in a lazy circle. "Attempting to reunite owners with their property."

"And?" she asks, her stomach locked in distrust.

"And it sounds like you care about your work."

"I do."

"So I decided to lose Oathkeeper."

 _"Four times?"_ she scoffs, but he just shrugs.

"Well, the first time was _almost_ an accident. I was stepping onto the platform before I realized I'd forgotten it," he says, his eyes alive with mirth. But then he leans forward suddenly. "You care about your work a lot." He sits back again, no apology in him as he looks at her from head to toe. Inexplicably to Brienne, she feels no scorn in it as his head cants to one side, his gaze direct and measuring. "And your eyes are extraordinary."

The compliment only sets to make her feel off-balance and it does nothing to ease her sense of suspicion. "You called me a cave troll."

He waves that fact away casually. "I don’t think it serves either of us to rake over the coals of the past." 

"You called me a cave troll _three days_ ago."

"Ancient history, Ms Tarth," he sniffs, "and you are very tall."

"I had noticed," Brienne grumbles, frowning at him. "What, so now it’s a good thing? Because I hadn’t noticed _that_ , myself."

"Well, your legs might be the longest I’ve ever seen," he reasons, though his face falls into the mildest grimace as his gaze drops and skips from his knees to her own. "Though I can’t quite tell in this position and," he tilts his head slightly, "the uniform is hideous. That shade of...I'm not sure what it is, isn’t really your colour."

"They call it 'dusky rose'," she informs him, somewhat sullenly. "And believe me when I say it isn’t anybody’s. The drivers almost went on strike when it was changed." She pretends to brush away some crumbs from said trousers and finds herself trying to tug the lower legs of them downwards when she realizes there might be a gap between her socks and the hems. She hasn't shaved for at least a week. She thinks he sees what she's trying to do, if the teasing grin threatening to spread is any clue, so she straightens her back and peers down her crooked nose at him with the utmost dignity. "And they’re 100% polyester, I’ll have you know."

"I’ll bet that was fun in high summer," he says, his lips twitching in barely controlled amusement.

"It was _not._ " Her cheeks puff as she blows out a long breath, still completely unable to make heads nor tails of the man. "What is this, Mr Lannister?" she asks, gesturing briefly between them.

"I have no idea, Ms Tarth," he says, his eyes narrowing. "Is that a problem?"

"I don't know," she tells him, quite honestly, for she does not. "I don't understand. Why are you even here? Again?"

"Lunch?" he says, briefly raising the last scrap of his roll. But he lets it drop again and shrugs and for a moment, Brienne sees a flash of uncertainty in him. As ever, it is gone almost instantly and he shrugs. "Like I said, I liked your voice. And then you saw me writing."

"Lots of people must do that."

He shifts forwards until his torso nearly hits his legs, suddenly staring at her with a great intensity. "I mean you _saw_ me writing." For a few seconds, he doesn't look away, and Brienne feels somehow caught, but then he leans back again and points up at the ceiling, near the door to the corridor. "Look, could you turn that camera away without setting off every damned alarm in the building?"

"I don't know," Brienne says. "Are you going to murder me?"

"I don't have Oathkeeper to hand," he says flatly, even as he smiles. Then he pops the crust of his bread into his mouth and starts chewing again.

Brienne gets up and goes to the corner to twist the camera away on its mounting, only to stop dead on her feet when she turns back. Jaime Lannister is standing and removing his overcoat, draping it over four little seats. His jacket follows, all of his movements neatly measured and made with his left hand alone.

He catches her eye, and she knows she is probably gawping at the surprise disrobing; but he just shakes his head, rolling his eyes at whatever he thinks she's thinking, and sits again, waiting for her. Slowly, she comes back and sits in front of him, the distance down to the tiny chairs seeming to take forever.

For perhaps a whole minute, they simply look at one another. He finishes his final mouthful of roll and still doesn't move; and Brienne wonders if he is finding her as difficult to read as she is him. Maybe not, as with a deep breath he appears to make a decision, his left fingers fiddling with his right shirt cuff.

Then he starts to fold it back, and everything she thought she knew about this man is turned on its head. Because even though the little finger of his right hand is twitching, it is _not_ real. Underneath white cotton, his wrist is attached to a flesh-coloured frame which seems to extend up to his elbow, formed, for the most part, in the shape of an untouched forearm. But Brienne can see, through the holes in that frame, that the arm underneath is thinner and heavily scarred. Then Jaime Lannister unclips and slowly twists his right hand entirely off, right in front of her, balancing it palm down over his left knee. That finger doesn't stop twitching.

"Oh, gods," Brienne groans out, recoiling from him, her shoulders thumping against the wall behind her.

"Dammit, the sock's coming off too," Lannister says, staring down at the short undersock covering his empty wrist when it drops off onto his leg as if it has somehow betrayed him. But then he shrugs, appearing to let it go as he looks back at her. "See? I'm neither left-handed, or right-handed. Not any more."

"That's disgusting!" Brienne blurts out, only to realize the moment he flinches that he has misinterpreted her unthinking words. She points at his left knee. "No, not your arm! I mean the hand. It's still moving!" She tentatively reaches across, touching the prosthethic with her forefinger. "Is that real hair?" she asks, before another sensation hits, and she pulls her hand back, her face screwing up in revulsion. "Oh no, it's _warm!"_

Jaime Lannister's gaze flickers from the stump of his right arm to his 'hand' in what appears to be momentary confusion, but then he smiles, picking up and bobbing that hand in a lazy line in between them. "Independent power cells in each finger. It's even creepier if I forget to turn it off at night, believe me. It crawls, ever so slowly, across the bedside table." He sets his hand aside and then unclips the frame covering his arm, pulling it away with a soft moan of relief.

Brienne stares at the fully revealed arm not with horror, but undeniably with some pity. Not because he is different, but because the scarring is so extensive, none of it initially appearing to be cosmetic, that she doubts he got medical attention quickly. There are patches where she thinks infection had to be dealt with, if her first aid training and years of friendship with her neighbour, an advanced trauma nurse, are any clue. And it's old too. This is not a new injury.

There must have been so much pain, she thinks, and is staggered by the fact that he has managed to keep it hidden. "But how?" she asks him. "When? This would have been all over the news."

Jaime Lannister's smile is rueful. Cutting. "I used to think there were no men like me. I was wrong. Turns out there are a few. At least at a distance."

"I don't understand."

"My father believed it would show weakness for a Lannister to publicly admit that he was ever willing to negotiate a ransom," he says, his voice becoming shaded with bitterness. "So whilst I was busy being chained to a radiator a few years back, I was also, I'm told, in the Summer Isles, having a whale of a time with my sister."

 _"Oh,"_ Brienne breathes. "So that wasn't true?"

"I wouldn't say that," he replies, watching her carefully, "though I've never been to the Summer Isles." Brienne sits frozen in place as he smiles, though it is yet another one that cuts, full of self-deprecation. "I did believe us to be in love. Once. For a long time," he adds, his features growing cold and emotionless, as does the tone of his voice. "But it turns out that love has no time for the grotesque."

She looks at his injured arm, puzzled, and then at him. "That does not make you grotesque, Mr Lannister. Believe me, I know." He makes as if to protest her statement and Brienne just shakes her head. Such lies are no balm to her and, coming from someone like him, they would hardly rise above base insults. So she tries, as best she can, to talk about what _is_ grotesque in this conversation, without resorting to disgust herself. "Let me try and put aside the fact that she's your sister for a moment." She actually pauses, but only feels her brow start to wrinkle. "I don't know if I'll be able do that. But if she -"

"Could you at least try to look as if you aren't going to heave?"

"I'm doing my best!" she bursts out, only to shake her head in exasperation. "I don't mean...well...I...if she _loved_ you, why would this matter?" she asks him, thrusting her own hands out towards his damaged wrist.

Slowly, Jaime Lannister lifts his arm and twists it, looking at the space where his hand should be as if at an invisible puppet. Then he looks at her. "No idea, Ms Tarth. None at all." 

Brienne glances at his arm too and happens to notice a small lesion where his skin remains untouched by scarring. "You do know it's starting to bleed?"

"Where?"

"Here," Brienne says, gesturing to a spot a few inches from his elbow, on the outside of his arm, which shows clear signs of irritation. "Hold on." She rises and goes to the small set of shelves in the corner, digging through the various packages she keeps there in case of emergencies. The first aid kit is locked away in the other section of Lost Property and she makes a mental note to get one to keep here, just in case, as she finds a sealed pack of wipes and moves back, reading the packet out loud to make sure they're acceptable. "These are completely natural and for sensitive skin, as I understand it. Is that okay?"

"I should think so," he says, watching her drag her tiny chair forward a few inches and taking a place closer to him, her knees now jutting up to the right of his. "What are you doing?" he asks softly, as she sets the packet on her tilted lap and opens it.

"What do you think?" she says, jutting her chin towards the frame on the chair beside him. "You can't put that thing back on without it and your arm being cleaned." She pulls out a wipe and dangles it between them, waiting for his permission. He gives a curt nod, a Brienne hunches over, lifting his damaged arm by the elbow and carefully wiping at the sore that has formed where the frame has rubbed against his skin. There is a sharply indrawn breath and Brienne glances up in concern. "Am I hurting you?"

"No. Not at all." 

He says it very quietly and Brienne doesn't believe it for a moment. His face, which obviously sees a great deal more sunlight than her own, is practically ashen, and he's staring at her as if she'd just landed from another planet. Still, his arm must be cleaned, so Brienne chooses to tap into what little she's learned here about children, which seems rather too appropriate as she starts dabbing away again, trying to distract him with a question. "So who knows about this?"

Jaime Lannister clears his throat. "My father. My sister. A small number of medical professionals. The man who leads the team that designed the hand. And you."

She tries to ignore that last, though currently it seems to her beyond reason. "What about the people who did this to you?"

"I've never asked, but I doubt they got to enjoy their ransom for long." He says it so bleakly and Brienne pauses her ministrations to glance up at him again. He is sure they are dead, she thinks, though he doesn't give the impression of knowing any of the details.

She can't see that he's exceptionally sorry either, though as she looks down at the scarring blazing over his forearm, she can't deny that perhaps she would feel the same way, were she in his place. It flies in the face of everything she believes, but she doesn't think she would react any differently, and she has no idea what horror brought this about. It is a difficult thought, so she backtracks to the one she'd tried to ignore. "So. Why me?"

"I liked your voice, Brienne," he insists once more. "And let's just say I had a hunch."

The very idea of her being held in any regard by Jaime Lannister, of all people, remains an uncomfortable one, though Brienne becomes all the more so when she suddenly sees that it may not be as unwelcome as she had thought. So again, she changes the subject as she pulls a fresh wipe free and begins to gingerly clean the rest of his scar tissue, for the skin is clammy in some places. "I don't see why you keep wearing it, you know. Not if it's hurting you."

"That would be down to my father again," he says, with a hint of resignation. "He insists that if it becomes widely known that I was abducted, then others will be more vulnerable to it." He shrugs, seemingly accepting the logic in the path on which he walks. "He may not be wrong. He is a complete bastard at times, but he does have an annoying tendency to be right about these things."

"Your sister?" Brienne asks, not certain if she wants to hear the answer. 

"Perhaps, but believe me, she has an enormous security team." He moves his face closer to hers. "I spent years trying to evade their notice, remember?" It is a challenge, Brienne can feel it, but if he wants to provoke a reaction in her, she won't let it work. She can be shocked, but it never lasts for long, so she just returns his stare. In the end, he sits back, shaking his head. "No. Not my sister. My _brother."_

That throws Brienne. "Your brother?" She has to think hard to recall any third Lannister sibling and it is only when she remembers a vague news report of some business takeover some years ago that a picture of him springs to mind. "Oh. Your brother." She nods in understanding, but then one curious thing occurs to her. "You didn't mention him. As one who knows about this."

"He doesn't. We've barely talked since my bout of public idiocy in the Summer Isles." 

"You've let him live with that _lie?"_

Even she can hear the outrage in her tone, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to Mr Lannister. "It wasn't so much of one. He wouldn't approve of this, though it's for the best."

Her lips pursed in disapproval, Brienne pulls out another wipe and gently maneuvers his arm until she is holding his forearm, as lightly as she dares while supporting it. She doesn't, as it turns out, want to hurt him, which is almost a surprise to her. "Don't you work with...Tyrion? It is Tyrion, isn't it?" At his nod, she carefully wipes the deeper marks marring his arm and the end too, though what might be later surgery there has made it much smoother, possibly for his prosthethic. "I don't know much about your brother, but I think I heard he works for your company too."

"Yes, but for obvious reasons we no longer spend a great deal of time in each other's company. And when we do, I have Oathkeeper to distract him."

"Oathkeeper?" Brienne, startled, releases his arm, afraid of causing him pain. She is happy that he is clean enough for now, anyway. She sits back and looks at him curiously. "You use Oathkeeper to draw everybody's attention away from your hand?"

"That's exactly its purpose, Ms Tarth," Jaime Lannister says, lifting his left hand to mime sliding his umbrella into place and settling the crook over his right forearm, where it can be clearly seen by all. "Why else would I own what might well be the world's most expensive umbrella? Tyrion loathes it. He is vulgar, but he never developed my former tastes for the expensively showy. I admit, I owned a gold-plated Leontro 4.2 Turbo once," he just smiles easily at Brienne's instant and derisive snort, "but I think Oathkeeper runs it a close second in the costly vulgarity stakes. Poor Tyrion. He can barely stand to look at it." 

"So why name it that?" Brienne asks, sure that if she couldn't work out the man reputed to have killed someone with his infamous umbrella, she has even less chance of doing so with the very different and far more complicated man he really is.

"Oathkeeper? To remind me why I'm doing this. To stop me throwing the damned hand at my brother in frustration. Or taking it off and shoving a couple of fingers up the ample nostrils of one Mr Pycelle." He answers Brienne's question before she asks it. "One of my father's hugely overpaid flunkies." Jaime Lannister frowns in pure disdain. "I'm pretty sure his doddering old fool act is a complete lie, you know."

Brienne just stares down at a false hand and raises her eyebrows, which rustles up a grin from her somewhat unexpected lunch companion. "So," she says, "do you need help getting back into that contraption?"

"You don't approve?"

"No. I don't," she tells him, already firm in that view. "Was it your _father's_ idea to keep your brother out of the public eye too?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I wouldn't like him."

"Then join the back of queue and settle in for a wait," he laughs. "I believe it'll be a long one."

Brienne picks up and prises the frame apart to wipe the inside clean, but it doesn't have much give and her hands are large, so she struggles to do what she feels would be an adequate job. She manages to get the wider end clean, but after a couple of minutes squeezing her hand up towards the wrist end, which has thick synthetic padding to support a thinner wrist in a more natural one, a wipe flailing uselessly in her fingertips, she gives up in frustration. "Do you have to wear this part?" she asks him. "I don't think you should, if you can avoid it."

"Technically no," he concedes, "but it would be a fine state of affairs if my hand dropped off to do a very slow jig in the middle of this afternoon's meeting with Stark Org." With a nod of thanks, he plucks it from her hands and slides it into place, wincing visibly as he secures it. He looks at her and Brienne knows she is glaring at him for being so stubborn. He just smiles in return. "All right. I promise I'll take the cage off the moment I get home, Ms Tarth."

"Just _this_ part?" she asks, knowing too that she is being stubborn herself. "Why not all of it?"

"My home is somewhat of a goldfish bowl," he explains, with some regret. "It used to be on its own in the middle of nowhere, but a charming new 'development' has sprung up around it. All grand, marble columns and extremely nosy neighbours."

"Then why don't you get curtains, like the rest of us?" Brienne says absently, picking up the sock for his wrist from his thigh without thinking about it. "This is damp," she says, holding it up in the air in front of her face between thumb and forefinger. Almost automatically, she brings it to her nose, only to shift it away again very rapidly. "And it kind of smells," she says, her voice sounding strained, even to her own ears.

"Why, thank you, Ms Tarth."

"I only mention it because I don't think you should put it back _on!"_

He waves away her honest protest with his left hand and an understanding chuckle. "It's fine. Nobody ever talks about the smell. It can be thrown." He nods towards his coat and jacket. "There's a new one in the right pocket of my overcoat." Brienne is up, throwing the package of wipes aside and moving before he finishes speaking. "I can get it. I'm mildly crippled, not _feeble."_

Brienne slams the old sock into the bin with a soft sigh of relief and turns immediately back to get the new one. "I am aware," she tells him. "Now be quiet."

He laughs outright at that. "Do you ever wish you'd never mentioned something?"

"No," she says, leaning over and finding the correct pocket in the coat, which is lying under his jacket, "but then I don't have a habit of running my mouth like some." She ruffles around blindly and grabs a thin plastic packet that she assumes contains a fresh sock. It does, though as she pulls it out her attention is dragged elsewhere as something hard and small drops out too, hitting her shoe and skittering a foot or so across the dark, threadbare carpet, in the direction of its owner.

Silently, Brienne crouches down by it, the plastic package rustling against her knee as she picks up the missing ruby eye of a lion and holds it up in the direction of one Jaime Lannister. "It fell off," he says, biting his lip for a moment. "Like my hand, if with a little less assistance. I like to keep it nearby. Unlike the original hand, before you ask." He waves his 'caged' arm at her then, but seems to instantly regret it, quickly settling it to stillness with another badly-hidden wince. 

Brienne shakes her head at him and gets back up to tuck the ruby safely away before retaking her seat as she tears the packet open. The sock is a small thing and it doesn't take much for her to pop it into place, but then she can't work out why it wasn't put on first, before the cage. As things are, the sock is rucked up at the edges and sitting over it. She leans down low to inspect it.

There is a slight cough. "Do you have curtains then?" he asks.

"Hmm?" Then she sees the raised lip for the sock to be fed into and starts to tuck it neatly in.

"Curtains. Like 'everybody else'?"

"Curtains? Oh. Yes. Of course I do," Brienne mutters as she starts to get the hang of it, pulling a section back out to make sure she gets it into place without any folds. She can't imagine those would be anybody good for anyone wearing a prosthethic. 

It takes her a few more minutes to get it right and she is almost there when he speaks again. "As you work here, I hope you at least get free travel in." Brienne finishes up and is making sure everything is just so when he adds, "Though the service is terrible. I don't know if you noticed, but I had to get the third express in yesterday. The second was cancelled."

She looks up to chide him for his tale of woe, only to find him smiling quizzically down at her. Awareness hits and Brienne lifts her hands away from his arm as if they have been burned, suddenly painfully aware that Mr Lannister was probably wholly capable of completing that particular task himself. Mortified at her presumption, she sits back and drops her hands into her lap, but he just dips his head in unspoken thanks and picks up his hand, still twitching eerily realistically as it is, from the chair beside him. "So. Free travel?" he asks her.

It takes Brienne a few seconds to regain her ability to speak. "I...I work in publicly owned transport, so I'm counted as a secondary key worker. I had the option of free travel or a place close to my job, so I live nearby," she eventually says.

"In _subsidized_ housing?" he says, pushing the hand back into place and clipping it on to make sure it won't be doing that jig in his meeting this afternoon.

Unbidden, Brienne nearly laughs at the scale of the horror in his voice at the thought of her home, though it could be through nervousness as much as anything. She isn't sure just how much he is exaggerating for effect, to stave off her embarrassment at having been so bold, and how much of it is true. "In a manner of speaking, yes. Though I had the right to buy, so I did."

"Is it as bad as they say?"

"Nowhere near!" she insists, though she is thankful the change of subject has seen her budding blush abate. "It might not be up to _your_ standards, Mr Lannister, but it suits me just fine. And the view isn't bad, from the twenty-fifth floor."

 _"Ooooo._ The penthouse?" he asks, with a sly grin.

"I wouldn't call it that," she says, "but it is on the top floor. I like it well enough."

"I bet the lifts smell."

"No." 

"Are there drug dealers everywhere?" he asks with a decided smirk as he carefully rolls his sleeve back down and buttons it.

"No!" she protests. "There are keyworkers everywhere! You know...nurses, teachers, council and emergency service workers? _Police_ officers?"

"Oh come now, Ms Tarth," he says. "You're so impeccably proper that I'm having to dig to find anything to tease you about."

It's like being doused with a bucket of cold water. Hurriedly, Brienne stands and gathers the discarded wipes from beside her chair. Grabbing the brown paper from the sandwich bar, she scrunches everything up, including the rest of her lunch and goes to add that too to the bin. Only then can she look at him. "My faults are plain to see," she says.

He just shakes his head. "I wouldn't say that."

"Then I think you ought to see an optician."

"No, Ms Tarth," he says from his seat. "You hide yourself away, but you are easy enough to see, if someone cares to look."

She wraps her arms about her waist and tells him, "I don't believe you can hide, and yet you manage to do little else." There is no judgement in her now. This is as things are for both of them. "I should probably get back to work."

"Nobody's rung the bell," he says, though Jaime Lannister nonetheless rises without delay and slips his jacket on with practised ease, considering that he has to do it in a way that will probably always feels backwards to him.

"Nevertheless, I have things to do," Brienne tells him as his overcoat goes on too. "Thank you for the roll," she adds, hoping she sounds grateful but knowing she fails when she says, "It was...interesting."

He moves to stand just in front of her, his face awash in disappointment. "I should've known you'd be a bacon purist." But then he smiles at her, and he almost takes her with him.

"I rarely eat it," she tells him, now attempting to be prim on purpose. "There is a time and a place for avocado, Mr Lannister, and a bacon roll is _not_ it." She goes to the door and holds it open for him to leave. "All of this," she asks, as he comes nearer again, "it _was_ a test, wasn't it?"

"Possibly," he admits, stepping out into the hallway and turning to face her. "I liked your voice," he says simply, one last time, and still Brienne cannot quite believe it, even if he truly seems to mean it.

"Was the _roll_ a test?"

"No. I liked it. I thought you said it wasn't bad?" His left hand rises to his chest in mock despair. "Wait. No. Say it isn't so. Why, Ms Tarth! You didn't _lie_ , did you?"

Then Brienne smiles, really smiles because she can't help herself, but only as she lets the door go and it closes between them. 

It only takes a few minutes for her to get the Lost Property Office up and running again, though it requires a couple of attempts for her to fully retract the rattling shutters, which will need oiling later on. 

Once she is back in her own small domain, where she feels most comfortable, Brienne removes the lunch sign in full view of a certain customer, but even if they share another smile, she doesn't open the window until she has retrieved a particularly notable umbrella from its now-customary place in the blue trolley.

She slides the window opens and hears the sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor. Gently, she holds out Oathkeeper, tapping the crook on the ledge. "Your umbrella, Mr Lannister."

The umbrella is swept away in a semi-graceful arc to be stowed away as it ever is, a one-eyed lion being patted into place over a hidden injury. She wonders if it hurts him, carrying it that way, but after everything she's heard today, both good and bad, she believes Jaime Lannister would do it anyway. The man in question looks at her when she makes no further move, obviously puzzled. "What, Ms Tarth, no forms to fill in this time?"

With a small shrug, she says, "I didn't bother logging it into the system when I arrived this morning. I had a lot of real work to do," though they both smile again when she adds, "and let's just say I had a _hunch_ you’d drop by."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many biscuits to Nurdles.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own it. 
> 
> Note: Yes. The chapter count has gone up. *Nods*

On the fifth day, she doesn’t even bother calling Lannister Inc. to inform a particular owner that Oathkeeper has gone astray once more. She has a feeling he has known since long before he left his seat in first class, in the early hours of this morning.

Her time is limited anyway; the end of the week always fairly busy as a parade of characters find their way to her office to lay claim to items which, if not crucial enough to be needed the day they were lost, may well be wanted over the coming weekend. Though the summer is ending, today sees her reuniting a number of sunhats of varying degrees of fashionability with their owners. Winter is coming, but it is not here yet, and the changing of seasons is proving a slow and meandering process. The barbecue season isn't quite over, it would seem. 

She does a roaring trade, such as it is, in sunglasses too, on top of the standard search for mobile phones and lost toys and curious packages that sees the day flying by. 

One of the more physically demanding tasks pops up just when she is considering taking her much-delayed morning tea break. A terribly polite young man in a neatly brimmed straw hat, accompanied by a couple of porters from the World Museum of Culture, comes and asks for a very large suitcase which he had described as 'quite heavy' in their phone call an hour past. To Brienne's chagrin, she located said sturdy case where it was stowed away overnight before his arrival, but had not attempted to move it. As a result, she ends up dragging the thing out of the Lost Property Office, sweating and grunting her way over to his trolley. 

Mr Tyrell is clearly unable to assist her, seeing as he is supporting his weight on a crutch, but his pointed request that the porters do so goes resolutely ignored too, the two men instantly finding the ceiling above of great interest.

Some people really _do_ take advantage of having jobs for life, Brienne thinks to herself as she hoiks a corner of the huge suitcase up onto the trolley. "What's in here - lead?" she gasps, as she sticks her foot behind one of the wheels to stop it rolling away.

"As a matter of fact, yes," Mr Tyrell says, words tumbling out of him. "It's a collection of trade weights and even some rare, handbeaten medieval lead decorations and gutter fixings from the Westerhouse of the Guild of Spicers! It was just demolished, which is a crying shame, and I...," he looks down at her, his burst of enthusiasm for his subject overtaken by mild embarrassment, "...probably should have mentioned that before now, shouldn't I? I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter, ser," Brienne reassures him, trying to blow away the hair stuck to her face as she spends a moment pondering just how badly these precious items were packed for transportation. It feels like there is a great deal of lead in there. She grips the handle, readying herself for the final lift, when a left hand joins both of hers, the fingers lacing with them strong and warm and not remotely as unnerving as their near-identical brothers.

She looks up into brightly amused eyes. "It's full of lead, Mr. Lannister," she whispers.

"So I heard," he replies, an eyebrow quirking upwards. "On three?"

She nods and at his count, they lift and swing the case into place with considerably more ease than Brienne might have managed on her own. "Thank you," she says quietly to him as she stands, arching her back slightly to try and make it feel less tried by her efforts. Jaime Lannister just smiles and walks away to join the end of the short queue that has formed behind Mr Tyrell and his overburdened trolley.

Once the proper paperwork has been correctly filled out and the curator's porters finally decide that the museum's cargo is worth their time, Brienne finds herself back in her more familiar place on the working side of the hatchway, facing out into the hall.

The next few people have far more ordinary requests, though it takes her an age to sort through the current glut of sunglasses for a fierce looking man from Essos, there being a large number of pairs that look very similar and the gentleman himself having forgotten which service he was on and even when he lost them. His terse, "I work in sales," is explanation enough to Brienne, who knows there are people who use the station many times a day; though she finds some amusement in the thought that the success apparent in his clothing might be more down to his demeanour than his skills in persuasion.

Finally, she sits and observes as the arms of a finely tailored overcoat fold onto the ledge in front of her. "You’re slipping, Brienne. You didn't call me." Jaime Lannister shakes his head, as if gripped by a severe disappointment which has gone on virtually uninterrupted since just before he left yesterday. "Has your legendary dedication to customer service gone on holiday?"

"Clearly not," she replies, jabbing a finger in the vague direction of the site of their recent labours. "But then, that would depend on the customer."

An entirely false hand rises to his chest and he lets out an equally false cry of pain. "Ouch!"

Brienne can't see anybody else waiting, so she grins back, folding her arms across her own chest and looking to her right. "Can’t you _save_ me from him, Otto?"

"Right. _Otto._ That's it. Who the hells _is_ this Otto?" Suddenly, Lannister launches himself at the window, though as the gap is a touch narrow for his shoulders, he ends up wriggling across the ledge on his elbows, leaning in and looking from side to side. His balance is understandably so precarious that his fleeting glimpse of the shock of red hair on his gift from some days before raises only a flash of a grin, his face travelling without pause, even if he appears to miss the first aid certificate he rightly predicted entirely. 

Brienne stares upwards, placidly watching refined features swing about and change, moving through untramelled curiosity and confusion until one Jaime Lannister gets his first view of dear old Otto. The bedraggled object that has long since been the unofficial mascot of this particular office is as unmoved by this intrusion as he ever is by anything, so Brienne watches with her own kind of amusement as one of the richest men in Westeros gapes, knowledge slowly filtering in. 

Brienne can hear the toes of his, likely very expensive, shoes beating against the poorly tiled wall outside as he takes in the view. But then, ever so slowly, he sort of slides back out into the hallway, landing back on his feet with a gentle thud, schooling his features into a semblance of concern. _"Oh._ Poor Otto."

"Quite."

A head tips and a sly gaze shifts towards Brienne's right. "Are you sure you don't need rescuing from in there? He looks like he could be dangerous. Or depressed. Maybe more depressed than dangerous." He nods at her, apparently satisfied with his diagnosis of the unfortunate bear's mental state. _"Definitely_ dangerous, though," he warns.

"Thank you for the offer, but I think Otto's mauling days are done, and I'm perfectly happy where I am." She shrugs up at him. It is, after all, a simple statement of fact.

"As you choose," Jaime Lannister smiles. He seems to be doing that a lot more genuinely now and Brienne isn't yet sure what to make of it. "So. What's Otto's story?"

"Well...for some reason, when he was still unclaimed after a year, there were no charities that wanted him, and it was decided that it would be an even sadder end for him to be thrown out with the rubbish." She waves up at Otto, his sorry tale almost done. "So here he has stayed. He's been waiting here for a decade, I’m told. He arrived long before I did."

"Before you? I thought you were _born_ here."

"I was not," she sniffs, looking bearwards for support that will never come. "Was I, Otto?"

A rumble of amusement somewhere in Mr Lannister's chest drags back her gaze and she finds herself an object of wholly false pity. "You do realize Otto’s a badly stuffed bear head? Don't you?"

"Yes," Brienne confirms, wiping at her face and realizing that she probably still looks sticky and sweaty, and possibly bright red. She promptly tries to forget that when she notices what could be, but probably isn't, the top of a disembodied green hat floating by to take up a waiting position at Jaime Lannister's elbow. She rises to retrieve Oathkeeper. "And still he’s better company than some," she says lightly a few seconds later, turning back to him and resting a lion on the ledge in what has quickly become her traditional way. "Your umbrella. Try not to lose it again, Mr Lannister."

He quickly threads Oathkeeper between his arm and torso, the curving crook left hanging over his forearm; an ostentatious accessory chosen to distract from a far less showy but, Brienne doesn't doubt, far more costly one. But he doesn't leave straight away, instead leaning against the hatchway. "Call me Jaime."

It almost sounds like a plea, but if she is warming to him, Brienne had still spent half the night awake thinking about the revelations of yesterday, unable as yet to square the circle that is Jaime Lannister in her head; not to mention his liking her in any way making no sense at all to her. So she grasps the wooden ledge and leans right across her desk, quietly asking, "If I call you by your given name, will you stop losing your umbrella?"

There is no way his smile then is anything but real. It seems to light him from within. "We won’t know until you try," he whispers, moving his face closer until there is barely the width of a finger between the tips of their noses.

For a few seconds, she just gets lost in the sensation of his breath across her cheeks, before she smiles back at him. "Have a good weekend. _Jaime."_

If she had purposely made it sound as if saying his name was a bit of a strain, the manner of it comes straight back at her. "You too. _Brienne,"_ Jaime says, biting his lip as he steps away. However, she has no time to look at her next customer before the crook of Oathkeeper reappears, catching the side of the hatchway, and Jaime leans back into sight. "By the way, I’m not sure if that's going to work. That attempt didn't sound very sincere, which is a let-down, coming from you."

Again, she cannot help herself, though this time Brienne laughs with him, and it feels freeing. "Then I guess I’ll probably see you next week, won't I?" She waves him away, even if they share one last, small grin before she leans out as far as she can to bring the short woman with the green hat and, it turns out, thick, milk bottle glasses into view. It's been five years since the hallway was increased in width and height, but no matter how many times she's asked, her requests for a slightly lower hatch continue to fall on deaf ears. She places one hand on top of the other and smiles down at the woman who, with her fluffy white hair and optically exaggerated, but notably pale brown eyes, looks to Brienne like a friendly owl. "Good morning to you, madam. Is there some lost property you'd like to claim?"


	6. Two Years Later - Epilogue Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With, as always, my sincere thanks to Nurdles.

Brienne carries the cafetiere out from her tiny kitchen and through the living area, towards the balcony. She steps out, pleased to note that the sun has finally swung around to the side of the building, leaving most of it in the shade.

And there Jaime sits, that winter sun, if hidden from her, turning his growing, tied back hair to the purest spun gold as it starts to fall from the sky on this short day. Even after a year, it is strange to find him sitting here on her balcony, overlooking the Blackwater Rush, though he does so each weekend without fail, come rain, snow or shine, if only for a little while when the weather is foul. His visits last a few hours, overall.

It had been her second nameday after they met that this had come about; she hadn't told him of her first, which came mere days after he first 'lost' Oathkeeper. Throughout that first year, again once a week, he'd been turning up with a variety of lunches from the artisanal hells, though the actual day varied as he travelled often for work. He never went so far as to pretend to lose his umbrella again.

They sat in the company of fairytale beasts and ate and bickered, but then Brienne would quietly remove the cage around his arm that she had loathed from first sight, cleaning and inspecting his stump for irritation. Without being told, she knew he simply didn't care enough to do so himself with the minute closeness he should, and she wondered how he had gone on so long without it falling to rot with just the cleanliness of regular bathing. In truth, she never once asked if she should. She just did it. They never really spoke then, though Jaime never objected.

It became a solemn ritual of sorts, one which, if only based in practicality, lent them both a moment of human contact that she knew neither of them could hope for otherwise, even if one of them arguably had more opportunities in that arena than the other.

But when he pitched up on that second nameday, a brown paper bag in his left hand and a small, colourful box covered in an explosion of professionally curled ribbons balanced extremely carefully on his right palm, he had seen immediately that something was very wrong, his smile fading to nothingness.

"My brother is dead," she'd softly told him. Heartbroken...and relieved.

After digging at the back of a drawer for the lunch sign she'd long since packed away, she closed the Lost Property office up like an automaton, busy being lost herself, and let him in.

She spoke to him then, of her brother. Of how, eight years before, the accident took him and left the shell of the young man he was behind. Drowned, but still breathing. Gone from her, but still there to love.

Their father had searched Westeros for the best care facility he could afford for his first-born son and found one, small and full of all the warmth you could wish for a loved one in such need. It was in King's Landing, the sleek, discreet building set in a back street just ten minutes walk on the other side of KL Central from the home Brienne bought, in time, to be near to him. Father could not. He had other sons. A new family, back on Tarth.

Brienne dropped out of college before it even began, within days of Galladon's home being found, and got a job at the station by the skin of her teeth, though it took some time for her to find the role there she has truly come to hold dear. 

She told Jaime how every day throughout those years she had walked to see her brother, except for the times she caught the 'flu and his doctor advised her to go home to recover, both for her own health and for Galladon's, and another when she had to stay in hospital herself for a time. How sometimes she might only sit there for a few minutes, to check he was comfortable and say hello, but on others she would stay for longer, telling him about the trials and tribulations of her days, or speaking of their childhood. How, every time, every day, she missed the older brother who used to tweak her nose or tug on her ponytail, and then hug her, even when she was approaching the age of eighteen.

How she was sorry he was gone. And not sorry, because he had been gone for so long.

Jaime had looked at her for some time after that, his face unreadable, and in the end he pulled his phone from his pocket. "What's Pod's number? We'll call him back from lunch. He would have been back shortly anyway and you should go home. He won't mind, Brienne." 

Pod didn't mind, his overwhelming reaction one of shock that she had never even mentioned having a brother, but Brienne refused to leave her post anyway. She spent the rest of that bleak day working as if in a fog, which only cleared after she left KL Central. She was halfway to the care home when she realized she was going the wrong way, but she did not cry, though the knowledge of her loss seeped through her veins like ice water. She simply turned and walked back the other way. The fog was gone, but she remained numb. 

Jaime had insisted he be available for the day of the funeral, though he refused to be a part of the body of mourners before she even asked. He did not know she wouldn't have asked it. His presence would be a distraction, a point of contention if he were seen by others. They both knew that, but neither of them chose to say it. It made no difference. Brienne was, at that point, a step back from the world, an observer in her own mind, her own life.

She'd barely noticed the service and her only thought at the vast, municipal graveyard, as a cutting wind blew across countless headstones as though over unyielding wheat in a field, was that it was cold.

There was no wake. All of the relatives who came, few as they were, had to fly back out of King's Landing within hours; father back to his new family and Arianne and Alysanne back to college. She hugged them all at Galladon's graveside, keeping bitter thoughts unspoken. She wanted to ask her father why Galladon hadn't deserved to be buried at home, near their mother. She did not ask it. She just told him that she loved him, for that would ever be true. 

She'd wanted to ask their... _her_ younger sisters why they would not stop crying as if their worlds had come to an end throughout, when they hadn't visited him in this city even once. Not when he was alive. But that was unfair. They were much younger, and could hardly be expected to remember the person their older brother used to be. So she kept quiet and told them that she loved them, and asked them to keep in touch with her; that she was interested to know how their studies at the beauty school at Highgarden were going. That last was a small lie and she did not tell it well, but it was better than the unjust truths then clawing at her heart. 

After thanking the nurses from the home who had come to say goodbye to their patient with a moving sense of real care, Brienne had been left alone next to that hole in the ground. "I will visit you, soon, Gal," she'd whispered to his coffin lid, "but I don't think it can be every day. The bus routes that come out this way are awful."

Her feet had felt like lead as she took the long path away from her brother, but just past the elaborate wrought iron gates there was an expensive looking saloon with blacked out windows, from which Jaime emerged as she moved numbly from the land of the dead back into that of the living. "Let's get you home," he'd said, and Brienne just nodded.

To this day, she remembers little of the journey back to Chelsted House, just a blur of buildings and white noise from the radio, though Jaime has since told her that the driver wouldn't stop complaining about the traffic the whole time. The next thing she can recall is the car sitting outside her block, the engine idling as she didn't move. "Will you come in?" she'd asked him in the end. "Just for a few minutes?"

They'd ascended to the top floor in silence and Brienne didn't even bother to take off her coat before heading into the kitchenette to fill a small bowl with warm water. Jaime must've seen what she was doing and understood it, because she returned to find his jacket off and him rolling up his right shirt sleeve. He sat on her small sofa and she kicked off her shoes, curling her legs underneath her to clean his scarred arm. She'd needed to feel truth in care, in anything, and if the care was her own it made no difference.

So it was that gently, but with shaking fingers, she patted at his arm, drying it with some fresh kitchen paper afterwards. Her throat was thick when she said, "There is another sore developing near your elb -"

"I _know_ ," Jaime told her then, catching and stilling her hand with his own. He tipped his head down to look at her. "Brienne, I'm going to send the driver away and get some food delivered." Perhaps she'd looked to be about to protest, because then he added, "Don't worry. I won't stay. But I think you know the last train out to Crackclaw isn't for hours yet." Again, then, she had nodded, and as he rose to arrange things, Brienne just stayed on the floor, wondering how her lower legs had gone astray from her. Pale underneath the slightly raised hemline of her black skirt, they were askew, like those of a newly born foal struggling to stand.

She eventually wept over her food, but not for long and in silence. Jaime simply passed her a tissue when she was done beginning grieving, though they both knew there was more to come. And that she would not share it. Once his plate was empty and Brienne set hers, which was not, on top of his on the floor, they'd sat side by side, not touching, watching an old movie that Brienne didn't recognise and didn't take in. They barely talked, but that wasn't the point.

In the end, when it was dark and the number of flights screaming over into Blackwater South had dwindled to that of later evening, Jaime left, but not before he'd pointed to the still-wrapped present on her bookcase, sitting as it was beside a troll that had made its way home with her not long after they met. "You should open that, you know," he said as he put his jacket back on. "I don't think I could have bought something more suited to you. I didn't think it was possible. But I did."

She'd wanted to say that she didn't feel like celebrating, but just walked him to the door. "Thank you," she told him then, and she had meant it. And with a nod of his own, he was gone.

Only minutes later, she'd found herself cutting away the ribbons and taking off the paper with care, making sure it was carefully folded before she opened the box inside. Inside her only nameday present was a tiny but thick volume, 'The Heroes of the White Book.' She'd taken it to bed with her, filling her head with the deeds of the knights of old, wondering, beyond all reason, if she could have been one of them even as she hoped that, were they living back then, her brother might not have been stolen from her by the sea.

Thus had ended Jaime's first visit to her home. She has always been convinced that the following one, that next weekend, was purely made to make sure she wasn't going to throw herself from her balcony, but then there was another. And another.

And if his first visit was one of quiet consolation, he has since made clear his personal theory on her living room being a dark, blood red, refusing to be convinced that it never had anything to do with him no matter how many times she brusquely informed him she made that choice years ago, because it's cozy at night. Whilst they've sat watching terrible television shows, he has made light of her choice of furniture too, particularly when she complains about him filing his nails to keep them the same length as the ones on his false hand when he is sitting _on_ it; though in truth, he does it with extraordinary skill, given that he has to hold the plastic handle of the file between his teeth. He always insists her sofa is lumpy, despite his having fallen asleep on it a few times. She will not be riled on the matter by a man who continues to live in a goldfish bowl, and has told him so. 

Not that they ever talk about why, though she has worked it out by now. He may no longer love his sister, is almost ferocious in his denial of it, but it is obvious to Brienne that his home was once perfectly isolated; more than suitable to secure their privacy. Even if, from what little he's ever said with the benefit of hindsight, it eventually meant that he did more waiting than being loved. She thinks he tells it true when he says he is over Cersei. But he is not over the loss of human contact he has endured since, that he endures to this day.

"If you just keep standing there, it's going to get cold." Dragged from her sombre musings, Brienne looks at Jaime, who is sitting there in a t-shirt. Granted, today has been very mild, all things considered, what with true winter being so close, but even she is wearing long sleeves. But again, she knows why. The lower half of the balcony is made of concrete slabs and the waterside location of Chelsted House means almost nothing can be made of this space from street level. Here, he can be himself and Brienne knows he actually finds the feeling of being outside, with the air on his stump, both liberating and relaxing, no matter how much his arm aches from the chill as a result.

"Better the coffee be cold than all over my kitchen worktop," Brienne counters, stepping over and placing the cafetiere carefully in the middle of the small table. His newspaper falls to said table's edge as she sits across from him and a certain arm starts to rise in weak excuse for his dismal attempts at domesticity. "Don't you even try it," Brienne sits and smiles at him, far more easily than she could have ever thought she would two years ago. "Not unless your other hand falls off too."


	7. Epilogue Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With my thanks to Nurdles for her support in this and everything. :)
> 
> Chapter note: some bad language.

"My other hand too?" Jaime sniffs and turns over the page of his newspaper, flattening it out with his stump. "Don't come at me all at once with your pity, Brienne," he says. "It wouldn't do for me to be overwhelmed."

"Best I avoid that then," Brienne says, fully shaking off bleak remembrances of the past and deciding to top up his coffee cup, lest the poor thing has to resort to drinking a tepid beverage.

"Did you read this article about Myrwenna?" he asks, a half-smile playing over his lips as he markedly does not watch her at her small, self-appointed task.

"No. I only buy the weekend paper for you. You _know_ that," she says, refilling her own cup too. "I gave up on them ages ago." She wonders why, or more crucially _how_ he has not yet done so himself as she places the cafetiere back down again and lifts her cup, warming her fingers on it and leaning back in her seat. "Besides, she'll always be Otto to me. What does it say?"

"Well, it must be big news in the north for it to make the nationals. Page 7 too." His smile takes a turn for the brighter. "Oh look! There's a quote here from _you."_

"There is?" Brienne asks, with some concern. Otto's identification as Myrwenna had seen a flurry of calls to the Lost Property Office from a number of parties claiming interest in the matter, but she doesn't recall any of them specifically announcing themselves as journalists. It was a very busy time though, so she can't be sure. "What does it say?"

"In news from Hardhome, the extraordinary rediscovery of the head of the legendary bear, Myrwenna, is causing a stir amongst the local population. A range of celebrations are planned for when she goes back on display in Hardhome Museum. Retailers in the area are already reporting a shortage in bear masks as people rush to buy their own to welcome home the beast who is reputed to have nursed a child through a bitter northern winter."

Brienne lets out a low groan. "You're going to read the whole article, aren't you?"

Jaime glances slyly up at her. "I am. Now where was I?" He clears his throat and continues. "No less than three separate official parades have been planned in the days leading up to Myrwenna's reinstatement in pride of place, and hotel owners are running out of capacity, with reserved rooms now running at close to 100%. 'I've never known it like this. We have guests coming in from all over the world! Well, there is one from Essos!' a Mr Frostall of Whitemount Hotel told us. 'I think this is the busiest we've ever been and I've been in the hospitality business for more than thirty years!'" He chuckles softly to himself and then grins at Brienne. "Do you think that Mr Frostall has booked out  _all four_ of the rooms in his fine establishment?"

"Are you ever going to try and find the North anything but 'unbearably dull and sodding parochial'? Your words, if I remember."

"Let me think about that for a minute. _No,"_ Jaime says, having given it less than a heartbeat of any consideration, before turning back to the article. "Myrwenna, we can report, completed her journey home to the North in style, having been given a free first class ticket by Westerosi Rail. Accompanying her on her way home was - ," Jaime stops mid-sentence and scowls down at his paper as if it has personally offended him, only to look up at Brienne suspiciously. "Has he been calling you again?"

"Who?"

"You know _exactly_ who I mean, Brienne. Tormund Giantsbane, Director of who knows the fuck what at Hardhome Museum. Probably enormously long beards and bellowing."

"A couple of times," Brienne admits. "And...," she screws up her face, wondering if she should even mention that other thing.

"And?" he says slowly. Frowning.

She waves a hand as if it doesn't matter, which, to her, it never did. Yet as she has begun, she might as well finish. "He may have turned up at my work with a bucket of chicken. A few days back."

Jaime virtually hisses at her, "Not northern fried? Brienne, that's your only vice, so far as I've ever been able to work out. I could stop you dead in your tracks at a hundred paces with a small _box_ of it." Now he really is offended. Brienne can almost feel it in the twitch of his jaw as he bites out, "You _love_ Northern Fried Chicken."

"I don't like _his!"_ she protests, dangerously close to shouting, and has to make a real effort to lower her voice as she expands on the incident. "Look, I think he'd started eating it before he arrived." She wiggles her fingers in front of her chin. "There was grease in his beard and...just no. I didn't even bother to ask him if he threw away the bones or dropped them back in the bucket before he put the lid on again." She can see her words are having little or no effect on Jaime, whose mood is visibly souring by the second. "I declined, Jaime. Politely."

"Well, you might have to be a little less polite to dissuade a man who will travel the length of a continent to buy a woman something she can buy herself minutes away from her home." Each word is scalpel sharp. He thuds back in his chair and turns his head, glaring out across the Rush. "I can see an NFC from here." 

"I know you can," Brienne says, resisting the urge to follow his gaze to look at it too. "He said he was here for meetings. Not me. As if that would ever happen, Jaime!"

He lifts his left hand, across his body, resting it on the balcony's edge in a fist before slowly extending his forefinger. "Look at the spinning drumstick, Brienne. Right there. Do you think they have any of those, up in Hardhome?"

"I don't know! It's northern, so probably?" Brienne huffs in frustration, wondering why Tormund, a man she would think of barely at all were it not for Jaime's going on about him so much recently, is an issue. "Jaime, why does this _bother_ you so much?"

That twitching jaw works for a few moments before she gets a reply. It is quieter than Brienne might have expected, given that Jaime is still looking fiercely over at the lights blinking on in the industrial area immediately across the Blackwater Rush, as night starts to fall. "I don't trust him."

That's new. Brienne had taken his previously stated dislike as a personality clash, not anything more. She racks her brain for any signs of deviousness in the northern man, but in truth has spoken to him so little that she draws a complete blank. "He may be a bit rough around the edges, but he doesn't seem untrustworthy," she offers. 

"I mean I don't trust him around _you."_

That statement is hardly a whisper, but it causes an earthquake in Brienne, a confusion of hope she won't admit to, even in her own head, and fear of being mocked and so many other conflicting thoughts that she simply ends up angry. "Look at me, Jaime." Finally he does, but he isn't really, so she grabs her own chin for a second and shakes it, just to get her point across. "I mean, _look at me_ , and stop being ridiculous! I doubt I'm in danger of being carried off as far as the King's Gate," she says, embarrassed at the lonely desperation in her voice, even as she lets her arm wave in that direction, "let alone the North. By anyone. I don't think they even do that anymore, it being _illegal_ and all!" She sighs, her short outburst enough to take the edge from her plethora of battling thoughts, and settles back in her chair to reassure Jaime, because she is not the only person in this conversation who has known loneliness; and it is now obvious where the source of his antipathy lies. "So I'm not going anywhere. What we have now, here, is _safe_. I promise you." He looks at her then, softly, as if to pry out her very thoughts from her head. Brienne does not want that, so she reaches out to shake the corner of his newspaper. "Just finish reading the stupid article, will you?"

A small shudder seems to ripple through him before Jaime takes a deep breath, sighs himself and begins again, thankfully skipping the paragraph mentioning Tormund Giantsbane. "The mystery of how Myrwenna came to be in the care of the Lost Property Office at King's Landing Central Station over a decade ago seems to be one that will never be solved. Brienne Tarth, supervisor of that department, told us, 'All the staff of Westerosi Rail take the care of the property of our customers as seriously as we do passenger safety. This particular item was found in a cardboard box on the southbound platform of the Scarlet Line of the underground here some twelve years ago, but as there was little CCTV coverage at the time, we have no idea who left the head of Myrwenna there in the first place. We are proud to have taken care of her for this period and to have a small part in her long history.'" Jaime looks at her fondly. "Quite the public statement."

"Shut up," Brienne laughs, certain she can feel herself beginning to blush. _Any_ kind of public speaking is not to her taste.

"I'm serious. So many zingers. Have you ever considered a career as a stand-up comedian?"

"Just keep _reading,"_ Brienne tells him.

"As the lady wishes, but I do believe you may have missed your true calling," Jaime says, covered with amusement at her mild discomposure as he settles in to a series of quotes from the 'excited residents of Hardhome'.

As she watches him, Brienne feels an ache in her chest, stemming from feelings both good and ill. Jaime has become such a fixture in her life that she now struggles to remember how lonely she was before he came along. How she had been lonely for so long that she'd stopped noticing it, years before Oathkeeper ever arrived in a blue wire trolley. He has changed everything, that way; their friendship a touchstone for them both she thinks. She hopes. 

She has never known anyone quite like him. By turns infuriating and caring, he's transformed her idea of what a friendship can be and what it can mean. Though it hurts to know that history is repeating itself, only with a much sharper edge.

How keener that edge is, Brienne thinks, when you know the difference between a childish kind of love, one that is safe, a dream beyond attainment - and _this._

For she loves Jaime, wholly and completely. Everything before is made pale in the light of it. She isn't quite sure when it happened, for she did not mark the day even if she will remember the moment she saw it for as long as she lives. Though she knows it took her less time than she could have ever imagined. 

His initial harshness had ebbed quickly. And only then was he made clear. Only then could she make him out. It happened on a day when there were no trolls or dramatic introductions. In fact, it was on the first day she had missed him arriving entirely, probably having been buried somewhere in the racking behind her desk at the time, searching for some item or other. 

All Brienne knows is that she had been working away, as ever, and she was swiftly completing the necessary paperwork for her most recently departed customer when she looked up, and for the first time ever, her signature went askew. Having not announced himself, by beast or body or voice, Brienne knows that, right then, she'd stared up at Jaime Lannister quite stupidly.

Even by that time she had known the worst of him, for Jaime had told her of himself freely. So she was aware that he truly had, in his late teens, used the body of Aerys Targaryen as a footstool as he waited to be found after a fierce altercation went wrong; a combination of the arrogance of youth and his name leaving Jaime certain that any price he would have to pay for his actions would be minimal. Rightly or wrongly, he had been proven correct, though given what he told her of the madness and plans of the older man, Brienne thinks she might have lashed out in the same way. Had Aerys Targaryen truly managed to destroy the global economy overnight, to burn it as he wished, countless people would have died in the aftermath, turned to ashes by the burn of hunger alone.

If they have spoken only rarely of his sister, Brienne knows enough to be certain that what Jaime thought he had with Cersei and the actuality were radically different. Because behind the cold façade of a man who had killed with a hastily grabbed paperweight, not with his umbrella as so widely assumed, stands another, more decent man; one whose belief in love, as he had always understood it, had been ground to dust.

That is why Brienne knows as she sits here now, just as she had on that day at work, with the knowledge of her love hitting her like the metaphorical lightning bolt at his unexpected appearance, that she will never mention it. She loves Jaime too much to lose him and is too aware that she could never hope for her love to be returned. Such a thought may have suited her as a young girl, but that girl's ideals have been beaten into submission by the world since and that kind of fancy relegated to its proper place, overtaken by the reality of what the mirror holds for her.

But if there is pain that there will never be anything more between them, Brienne will never pretend to regret what it is they have. Absurd it may be, but Jaime Lannister, of all people, is her most precious friend. And though it might only ever take the form of occasional phone calls and twice-weekly visits, she would not swap it for anything. There is true joy in that, and it is a joy that cannot be denied.

The timbre of his voice changes and Brienne realizes that she hasn't heard a single word from those who live in Hardhome. She just smiles at Jaime as he sniggers at something, low down on the page. "They've only gone and put a phone poll at the end, to rake in some extra coin," he says. "'Do you think Myrwenna really saved a child in winter?' I bet people will actually call it too. Which beggars belief, if you ask me."

"Well, Jaime," Brienne drags herself away from her thoughts once more, and asks him, even if she already knows the answer. "Do _you_ think she really saved a child in winter?"

Jaime snorts derisively at the very notion. "Not unless she was going to eat it later, and I have no recollection of bears burying children like squirrels do nuts for the leaner times." He stares at her as if she is suddenly being more outlandish than she already is. "Oh, come _on_ , Brienne."

"What?"

"I can see you _wanting_ to believe it!"

"I do not!" she protests, though perhaps a corner of her mind that is a remnant of that long-gone childhood, spent dreaming of such tales, blanches at her saying so.

Jaime leans in, his newspaper crinkling as it folds in front of him, and rests his forearms on the small table. "Brienne, you know just as well as I do that the head of Myrwenna the miraculous child-saving _bear_ happened to be discovered at a time, a century ago, when the never-well-known-or-any-good Hardhome Museum was in real danger of closing. Pity it bloody didn't," he adds, which is no surprise to Brienne, given the pointless conversations about Tormund which have become so common, of late.

"Jaime Lannister," Brienne says firmly, only to be unable to bring him to task for his irrational hatred for the northern man. If anything, it shows a mile-wide protective streak she'd never suspected he had in him; at least not when it comes to her. Not anything else. All rational thought defines that it can't be anything else. So she leans in too and grins at him. "I believe you like spoiling my fun."

"I believe I should never have bought you that damned book," he softly replies.

"There were no Ser Bears in the book."

"Tell that to..." he pauses, his lips tremoring with humour for a moment, _"...were_ there any Mormonts in it?"

"No," she says, gently batting at his left forearm. "But you _know_ that, Jaime!"

"I do," he says, appearing somewhat smug as he sits back a little and starts to fold his paper up. "I just like that you've read it so often."

"Okay, so it was the perfect present," she offers, if a bit grudgingly. "I _admit_ it. But I - "

Brienne stops at a sharp rap on the front door. She shrugs gently. "I'm sure it's just my neighbour. She often needs some milk, at the end of a long shift."

"So I've noticed," Jaime smirks and Brienne smiles too.

"It's true," she concedes, "that it might have been happening more since you started coming to visit." 

"Who can blame her?"

Brienne hauls herself back up to her feet at a second knock. "She's _going_ to get a glimpse of you one day, Jaime," she tells him, an idea with which he doesn't appear to disagree.

"But not today," he says, his gaze seeming to take an age to meander up to her face. "I trust you, Brienne. I'm simply not sure I trust your trust in others. You're just too good."

Brienne just shakes her head at him and goes inside, pulling one of the pale linen curtains across only far enough so that he cannot be seen from the living room. Then, very quickly, she lifts the fine net behind them to get in a parting glare, though that only provokes a tongue being pointed out at her. She promptly returns the gesture and heads into the hallway, turning on the floor lamp on the way, unable to stop grinning, if only to herself.

But upon opening the door, she finds she has to drop her gaze a little farther than she had expected. Her jaw takes longer to stop than the rest of her face and Brienne ends up simply gawping down at a head, covered in curls of a very particular shade of gleaming blond, as eyes both green and black travel up to meet hers, wide and caught in an apparently equal amount of shock to her own.

For a full ten seconds, nothing is said by either of them, but the visitor then seems to marshal his resources with astonishing speed. It is one which Brienne can't possibly match; an oddly familiar smile taking up residence on his face. "Good grief," he says, looking her up and down a couple of times, as if to make sure of what he's seeing. "Aren't you," he pauses, perhaps trying to think of something, anything acceptable to say, _"tall?"_

It is all Brienne can do to call over her shoulder, though it comes out as a reedy squeak. "Jaime?"

She looks back at the man in front of her, who has broken out into a joyful grin. "I mean, _really_ tall!"

"Jaime!"

"How tall are you?"

"Jaime, your _brother_ is here!" Brienne shouts, hearing a sudden rush of movement as a result; the clanking of a metal chair and a distinct stumble as he trips over the small step into the living room.

"Thank you for reminding me," her surprise guest says, with an unnerving amount of politeness as he holds out his hand, if without lifting it very far. "My name is Tyrion. And as you appear to have correctly guessed, I'm here to see my brother."

"Oh," Brienne says. If he has regained his equilibrium with consummate ease, she has not, and it takes her a moment to lean down as little as possible to take the offered hand. She thinks that is the right thing to do, immediately dismissing the idea of crouching low as patronizing, but isn't sure. "That's good," she mumbles, shaking his hand awkwardly and listening while Jaime hurriedly moves around in her flat. "It's good to meet you, Tyrion." Then she stands again, and they continue to look at one another.

Eventually, Tyrion just smiles up at her. "It is indeed 'good'...?"

"Brienne," she bursts out at the question he leaves unasked, not having realized that she had failed to introduce herself. "My name is Brienne."

_"Brienne,"_ he says, his head moving from side to side as if to work her out, though her name sounds suspiciously like something he might have already known. Then he shrugs happily. "Well, I truly don't mind standing here all day, but I'm not certain you'd appreciate where my eyeline is." Brienne jerks away from her place blocking his path, pinning herself against the open door, which raises a distinct chuckle from Tyrion. "Thank you. A little crudity goes a long way, on occasion." He walks in past her, raising his voice, which becomes instantly colder even if words are flying out of him at nineteen to the dozen. "Jaime, the markets in Qarth are tanking and I've been trying to call you all damned afternoon! If I could find you here, how long do you think it will take father to work out where you've been hiding on your days off, if he hasn't alre... _what the fuck?"_

That last is a strangled sort of yell, and Brienne follows the younger Lannister brother into the living area with an apologetic shrug to the elder for her pitiful dearth of delaying tactics. For once, Jaime seems speechless, his head halfway into her overlarge sweater, that he'd clearly swiped from where she'd left it earlier, draped over a dining chair. His right arm is bare, his injury plain to see. He wiggles his head until his chin comes free and drops his right hand to the floor, where it proceeds to slowly edge across the rug. He takes a deep, steadying breath and looks at the new arrival. "Hello, brother."


	8. Epilogue Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nurdles, you are my hero. Thank you for dragging me through this part, all muddle-headed as I am at the moment! :)
> 
> Chapter Note: some bad language. Rating raised for the run in to fic's end. If you like your fic to be of the more clothed variety, this is a suitable chapter to consider an ending.

 

For an age, the two stare at each other, and Brienne can't quite decide who between the brothers is the most unsettled. Tyrion is the one who chooses to break the stilted silence. "Jaime. What _is_ this?"

The mere sound of Tyrion's voice is enough to see Jaime's composure return with a vengeance. "This?" he asks nonchalantly, waving his bared limb. "Why, I think you'll find it's my arm."

"You know what I mean," Tyrion says, with some irritation. "When? How?"

"Remember when I was in the Summer Isles?"

"Do I _ever,"_  Tyrion spits, bristling with an anger that Brienne can understand, though whether today will result in him becoming more or less so remains to be seen. 

"I've never been to the Summer Isles, Tyrion," Jaime says. "Even now. And given what happened the last time I _wasn't_ there, I think I'll give it a hard pass. You know, for the rest of my life."

Brienne is both fascinated and worried by the virtual parade of emotions that flit across the younger Lannister's face then, outrage seeming to outweigh his obvious concern. "But why would you...?" His features harden. _"Father."_

If she is astonished by how loaded with animosity that one word is, Jaime clearly isn't, his confirmation of it clipped and dry. "It just wouldn't do for it to be known how much he'd pay for one of his children. Or most of one of them. It would make him seem weak. You know how bad that sort of thing is for business, Tyrion."

Jaime seems as impenetrable to Brienne in this one moment as he had when they first met; she thinks it his way of shielding himself from the hurt his brother could inflict. Tyrion, however, looks to be thinking extraordinarily fast. He must be as clever as Jaime had told her, because despite asking very little, she can see things starting to fall into place for him. Very suddenly, he gasps, as if offended. "For all this time, you've let me continue to believe you'd risk _everything_ for a sandy fuck with our dear -"

He clamps his mouth shut, glancing at Brienne as if unsure what to say, but Jaime just smiles. "Brienne knows about Cersei. She also knows that it is _over._ Remember that talk we once had about cripples, bastards and broken things, brother?" He lifts his arm and stares at the empty space above it. "Now I'm all three. It would seem that rather takes the shine off me."

"Why didn't you say anything?" This is almost a shout, the tone one of accusation instead of the question it is, though Jaime is unruffled by it.

"Would you have approved, Tyrion? Of any of this?"

"No!" Tyrion truly does shout that, only to drop his head into his hands, rocking back and forth slightly as he thinks. When his face re-emerges, his voice is softer, more conciliatory, his speech broken into pieces as thoughts gain traction. "Jaime, why would you...you wouldn't do this for _him...,"_ he stops for a moment, his mouth twisting as if in pain. "Me? He made you...and you did this...for _me?"_ His skin runs to pallor then, sprints for it, and Tyrion looks at his brother in horror as the scale of what has been going on settles in. "But Jaime, it's been _years,"_ he whispers.

Jaime is unmoved by the level of shock in his younger brother. "You do like to dodge security, Tyrion. You always have. Fact."

"Says the man with no tail outside, that I could see," Tyrion comes back, easy as anything, and Brienne is wondering if they always talk this way, when he takes a step forward, onto the rug, with a real burst of determination. "I'm _not_ weak, Jaime!"

"No. You're not," Jaime agrees, "but then I'm still thought to be able-bodied and you're a whole lot easier to bundle into the back of a van than I am." He shrugs. "It happened to me easily enough when I had both hands, and I'm six feet three."

It takes a few seconds for Tyrion to consider his brother's point. "True," he sighs in the end, only to turn to Brienne, the turmoil in his gaze morphing rapidly into curiosity. "How tall _are_ you, Brienne?"

"Six four."

Jaime huffs at her quietly offered estimate. "Six _five."_

"Six four and a half!" she counters quickly.

"Done," Jaime says, with a wild grin, knowing that's the tallest she's ever admitted to being, given that she's not quite six feet five, in spite of what he believes and no matter how many tape measures he turns up at her flat with. He looks at his brother then and waves at his detached hand. "Look, I'll just get myself together and we can head in to the office to sort things ou -"

 _"No."_ Never before has one syllable sounded so ably as if it were being spoken to a small child instead of an adult which, considering some of Brienne's customers at work over the years, is a real feat.

This doesn't appear to bother Jaime. "What about Qarth, Tyrion?"

"Fuck Qarth, Jaime! I hope it falls into the sodding sea!" Tyrion jabs a finger in the direction of his brother's newly revealed arm. "Oddly enough, I have more important matters on my mind right now." He starts to pace back and forth, his repeated journey spanning only the distance between Brienne's armchair and the end of her sofa, which can only be about five feet at the most.

Yet Brienne finds it engaging to watch, for even though Tyrion is agitated and has asked so little, he is plainly working everything out himself; he may be aware of some of the background, but he can't know all of it, and still she would swear she can see when other pieces of the jigsaw drop into place.

Finally, Tyrion pauses in his musings, looking decidedly put out as he admits to his brother, "I thought you were avoiding family functions because I - "

"No," Jaime says, glancing towards his scarred wrist. "This. Using eating irons is a little trickier than it used to be. Brienne'll tell you, my table manners are shot to shit, these days, and she hasn't seen me with a set of snail tongs."

"You hate snails," Tyrion says.

"Couldn't you have waited until Brienne looked repulsed by the idea? She does that a lot," Jaime says. "We argue about food. It's something we do."

Brienne wills her face, which might have reacted a little to that intrusion of his idea of 'high gastronomy' into the conversation, into some semblance of order. "Hilarious, Jaime," she says, drumming her fingers on the table.

"The joke's on him, Brienne," Tyrion tells her, as if conspiratorially, which seems rather hopeless under the circumstances. "Snails are the only disgusting thing he won't eat. If he ever recommends any kind of bread roll in the middle of the night, run. I mean it. _Save yourself._ One night, he made me one with peanut butter and pumpkin."

They share a look of sheer disgust as Jaime protests, "It was all there was in my fridge!"

"That's not a fridge, Jaime. It's an instrument of torture," Tyrion deadpans. And then something quite extraordinary happens, as Brienne sees it. The brothers Lannister smile at one another, genuinely smile, and it seems to her as if years of antagonism drain away in an instant. It is her first glimpse of what they once were, and now she understands completely why Jaime has put himself through this ordeal.

But if it is a watershed moment, it passes very quickly, perhaps an illustration of the peculiar Lannister family dynamics of which she and Jaime have occasionally talked. With a world-weary sigh, Jaime speaks. "As I was _saying,_ my table etiquette has gone somewhat downhill, over recent years. Dear Aunt Genna would be appalled. Best avoided, I thought."

Tyrion shakes his head, though he hasn't stopped smiling, and his pacing resumes, if with less of an air of disquiet. After another minute or so, he looks up again. "So. Abandoning me to do the tedious handshaking at the end of every damned meeting."

It's a statement rather than a question, but Jaime swings his arm back and forth twice anyway. "Now that you mention it, I can't quite do that anymore."

"Varys?"

"No idea. I don't believe so."

Brienne has no clue what that last exchange meant, but thinks that Tyrion is fairly close to running out of shoe leather, by this stage. So when his pacing begins again, she says, "Tyrion, have a seat. You'll wear a hole in the rug. If his creepy hand doesn't manage it first."

He doesn't sit, but at least his walking draws to a halt. Tyrion stares down at Jaime's hand. "It is hideous, isn't it?" But then he lets out a groan. "Oh, fuck!" he exclaims, going so far as to stomp his foot. He holds his hands out, his fingers spread, at the prosthetic. "Project Lion!"

Jaime lifts his right arm. "Present."

Tyrion gapes up at him. "Do you have any idea how much coin Qyburn has been funnelling into this thing?"

"Father has been so kind as to remind me every time I've reached the end of my tether with it."

Jaime's wry explanation does nothing to improve Tyrion's mood; if anything, it darkens again. "And using me to force you not to alter the public perception of the family name at the same time, no doubt." He shakes his head. "I'll kill him for this."

There is such bitterness in that statement and while Brienne doesn't want to linger on it, she can at least attempt to soften its edges. She folds her arms across her chest. "Get in line, Tyrion Lannister," she says, capturing his attention. She smiles down at him. "I've been waiting for longer."

Jaime sends her a quick glance, one speaking eloquently enough of gratefulness, before looking back at Tyrion. "Brienne's job means she's on point when it comes to proper queuing."

"I'd expect no less from the recipient of an Evenstar," Tyrion grins, and Brienne winces. The younger brother doesn't appear to notice, speaking on with some warmth and enthusiasm. "Though I'm liking Brienne of Tarth far more than I thought I would, even though I was expecting a Brian of Tarth, I'm ashamed to say." He shrugs with some minor embarrassment. "I thought Jos was mangling your name and all I could find pertaining to a B. Tarth at KL Central was your job title and the online footage of a security incident, which wasn't exactly clear. The electoral rolls were just as bad, though I managed to find this place." He looks around her flat, as if seeing it for the first time, which under the circumstances, may actually be true. "Which is better than I thought it would be, all told. I'm sorry for the intrusion, Brienne, and for my mistake, but I had to do some digging to find _him,"_ he finishes, throwing a thumb out at Jaime.

"That's fine," she says, waving it away. It's not the first time she'd been mistaken for a man, and Brienne doubts very much that Tyrion Lannister will be the last to do so. "I didn't exactly rush to put anybody right, afterwards. I even had to send back the medal so the engraving could be fixed."

Only then can Brienne bring herself to move her head to see what Jaime's reaction is. If anything, he seems simply stunned, though that impression doesn't last, a scythe-edged curiosity overtaking all else as he says, "An Evenstar, Brienne? For civilian gallantry?"

"You didn't know? You didn't tell him?" Tyrion looks back and forth between them in some confusion and with no lack of amusement, his shoulders trembling with it. 

"No," Jaime replies to him, his gaze then swinging directly back to her. "She did _not._ How? When?"

As these are questions she has asked him numerous times herself, Brienne knows she must reply, and honestly too. Yet she has never felt gallant or courageous about any of it; as she has ever thought it, she was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and had to do her best in the situation. And there is nothing brave, in her opinion, in being rendered critically ill and close to unconscious in less than two minutes. She lifts her hands, palms up and wavering as she attempts to distil what happened down to the barest of bones. "A guy went crazy at the station," she mutters. "With a few weapons. I was passing by on my way into the office, and...well..."

She stops, giving another tiny shrug as she tries to convey to Jaime that she has never thought it anything of note. She had just finished her lunch, that was all, and it seems to be settling into him as an idea when Tyrion intrudes, his finger wagging in admonition. "Our father was very put out with one Brian of Tarth, you know, Brienne. He said he had snubbed the Star Committee by refusing the ceremonials."

"I didn't want a marching band!" she really shouts now, her view on this immovable, no matter how many Lannisters there are in the room. "Why would I?" Her voice falls to an urgent whisper. "And it was better it be kept quiet anyway, even for Westerosi Rail. It turned out to be the _brother_ of one of my colleagues, though Sandor was on holiday that week." Even Brienne doesn't quite know why she's whispering. It isn't as if the reputation of the public rail service is any danger in her home, but the near-identical looks she's getting confirming it only make her more defensive of having shied away from publicity. "He'd been hurt _very_ badly by his brother when he was a child and it wouldn't have been right to have it all over the news again, reminding him." 

That explanation really doesn't seem to help matters, both Tyrion and Jaime starting to stare at her as if she speaking a different language, if each in their own way. So Brienne just sighs and moves onto the other one of Jaime's questions. It doesn't exactly take her long to work out. She nods at Jaime's arm. "Thinking about it, it would have been...probably around the time you were - "

"Chained to a radiator?" Jaime says softly, and in her peripheral vision, she notices Tyrion rock back on his feet at the blunt description, if only momentarily; to his credit, he does his best to make sure his brother doesn't see it.

But this is nothing new to Brienne. It's how Jaime most often describes his time in captivity, so she just answers with the gentleness she ever does. "Yes. I think so, Jaime. Hence this." With a small grin, she squashes the end of her nose flat and to the left which, experience tells her, is as close as she ever wants to get again to how it looked on that day. "And the hospital," she adds, letting her hands fall to her torso, to cover the areas where her scars lie, hidden, albeit that they are nothing compared to his. "It took me a couple of weeks to recover. Or so."

"Such modesty!" Tyrion says to Jaime, beaming, if with a decided hint of something else Brienne can't define. "Won't that piss off father, when he finds out?" He looks at her and makes himself clearer. "He won a Morningstar for 'outstanding military conduct' back in the war, as he _never_ stops reminding us. Fucked if I know how, to be honest. He was a General and has never seen a front line in his life." He chuckles to himself and turns back to his brother, but becomes silent when he sees that he is still absorbing this new information about Brienne. "Jaime? You truly didn't know this, did you?"

"No. As you may have noticed, I've been out of circulation for a while." Jaime folds his arms and tilts his head at her, saying her full name. "Brienne _of_ Tarth?"

He knows what that means just as well as Brienne does, and she tries not to think of the fact that her future probably holds a lot of jokes about the feckless aristocracy being thrown right back at her. "It's still on all my official documents and they can't print the 'of' onto work passes," she says, "and I admit, I mostly dropped using the 'of' after my brother left the same school as me. There were quite a few Tarths back home, but only one family had the name of what used to be the ruling House." She gives a shrug, for she remains rather embarrassed about her weakness as a child. "I already had targets enough on my back."

"Lockers?"

He asks it with gentility, and her returning nod is equally loaded with it. "I didn't fit into them by that stage, but it didn't stop them trying until I learned to stand up for myself."

Tyrion lets loose an ear-splitting hoot, which somewhat shatters the brief moment. "And boy, can she _ever_ stand up for herself! Ah, but you haven't _seen_ it, have you, Jaime?" He cups his hands around his mouth and, with the hammiest stage-whisper in history, shares his opinion. "I think you should. She's _fierce!"_

Jaime shakes his head, as if he can't quite believe what he's been told, though he directs a sly smile her way. "So, Brienne of Tarth. You're noble... _and_ noble?"

Slightly cross that her blue blood is definitely going to come back to haunt her, Brienne says, "Technically yes, but I've never owned a gold-plated Leontro 4.2 Turbo." Tyrion chuckles at that slight against his brother's former choice of transport, so Brienne adds a little more for him too. "And I've never lived in any kind of castle." Neither of them seems to care, and she ends up glaring at Jaime. _"What?"_

"Just when you think you know someone," he says, and bites his lip. 

"None of this is a big deal and it's not the sort of thing you just bring up in conversation! I think." She looks at them both then, uncertain. "Is it?"

"Tell that to our father!" Tyrion says, doubling over with gleeful laughter, though it seems to be more about the situation in general than her in particular. However, this does move his face somewhat nearer to the floor and he rears back up again after a couple of seconds, frowning down at Jaime's discarded hand as it takes a tiny lurch forward, propelled by a sudden twitch of its thumb. "Jaime, can't you turn this thing off? It feels like it's coming for me in slow motion."

"I've got it," Brienne says, reacting before Jaime does. He grins at her eagerness, but then he knows that she thinks that for all his hand is finely crafted, she doesn't find the knuckle cracking method of disconnecting the power cells palatable; even less so when he does it, because it takes a bit longer. Quite how this Qyburn has contrived to make the most lifelike prosthetic in the world without considering the ease with which a man with only one whole arm can power it down is baffling to her, but then from what Jaime has said, the scientist is more concerned with appearances than user comforts.

She crouches and with a shudder of distaste, picks up the free-ranging hand, starting to twist the fingers as swiftly as she possibly can. Tyrion gags at the sound of the first disconnection and by the time she is done, he is looking positively green about the gills. "It sounds like breaking bones," he groans and Brienne nods at him with some sympathy before reaching up to place the damned thing on top of her bookcase, next to her ever-present troll.

Rising to her feet, she turns to Jaime and stands in front of him. He looks at her in silent question and she tugs lightly at a fold of her jumper, where it is still bunched around the right side of his neck. "You might want to put that on properly now," she whispers to him.

She can see he'd forgotten it entirely, though of course it doesn't stop him from leaning closer a moment after a flicker of awareness dances across his face. "Then again, I might not. What if my arm wants to enjoy its newfound freedom, Brienne? What then?"

"Does your _arm_ want that, Jaime?"

"I haven't asked it."

"Good for you, either way," she tells the limb in question, patting it lightly, even fondly as she addresses it, before she turns so she can see Tyrion too. "Look, I'm going to leave you two to talk this out. I'll be in there," she says, pointing at the wall between the living area and her bedroom. "No hitting," she adds as she paces over to the door.

"I wouldn't dare - not with you in the building!" Tyrion calls after her, though she doesn't reply, just heading in towards her bed and sitting on the end of it. She is just considering leaning all the way back to get her book, however, when her arm freezes in mid-air, stopped dead by Tyrion breaking the short silence between the brothers.

"So, Jaime, how long have you been together?"

Brienne can almost feel her brain grind to a halt, and Jaime's reply sounds as stunned as she is. "We're _not."_

"You're kidding? But you're in love with her." Tyrion says it so matter-of-factly, as if he has already marked it as an indisputable truth, that Brienne drags her hand from where it is hanging motionless and slaps it over her mouth, trying to stifle a gasp she can't help but let loose.

And she thinks Jaime _hears_ it, words tripping out of him lowly, but warningly. "This isn't Casterly, Tyrion. The rooms aren't measured in large portions of a square mile. _Keep your voice down!"_

Tyrion does no such thing; in fact, quite the opposite. "Don't be a fool!" Brienne pushes herself back up to her feet, nearly swaying on them as the younger Lannister seems to set himself up to give a full-blown lecture. "Are you blind? I've never seen you look at anyone like that, Jaime, and I mean _anyone."_ Brienne lurches over to the door, wanting to hear more, but also desperate to make this stop. But Tyrion doesn't. "And as for our esteemed Brienne of Tarth, she is as mu - "

Brienne slams the door closed and leans against it, her fingers still clasped over her mouth, shaking her head slowly in disbelief. There's simply no way this can be true. It's not possible. Perhaps this is a joke on the part of Tyrion? But he doesn't seem the type to be so cruel; he might have no concern for her, but surely he wouldn't do this when he has just found out about Jaime's injury? 

She can hear their voices still, though they are muffled and what they're actually saying is indistinct. Despite herself, Brienne tries to listen to them for a minute or so with no success before finally forcing herself to let go of her mouth, peeling her fingers away from it one at a time. She has heard people say that their hearts were in their mouths before, but has never quite understood it before this moment; and wonders if they were scared it might spill out too. This childish notion doesn't come to pass, of course, but she feels like she can barely breathe as she heads over to bed, dazed. This time she perches on the side of it, next to her bedside cabinet. 

Yet still she can hear Jaime and Tyrion, and not hear them, so she reaches blindly over to her alarm clock to flick the radio on. The volume is low because she prefers to wake that way, but the chatter about the upcoming elections, she thinks, is enough to drive away the sound of the voices of the brothers, even if she has no idea what is being said by the newscasters in this room either.

She picks up her White Book and drops it into her lap, her fingers shaking as she opens it, hoping that the stories she now knows so well will distract her from the terrifying idea that everything that she has with Jaime has just ended. That it will never be the same again. Flicking from page to page, however, does her no good, for the information in this beloved gift might as well be written in unknown, ancient glyphs, for all that she can take in.

So she just closes it and waits, counting the flights going over, approaching the airport runway a couple of miles off, knowing with each one that time is passing even if, for her, it seems to have stopped.

She is up to eight when there is a timid knock on her bedroom door. "Brienne?"

She draws in a shuddering breath. She does not know if it is one of relief. "Yes, Tyrion?" she says. "You can come in."

The handle flicks and the door swings open, though Tyrion stays in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, looking it her. Brienne almost smiles for a moment, as Jaime has that habit too, but then his scrutiny becomes too much and she places her book back on the cabinet, only realizing when she lets it go that she had been gripping the spine of it so hard that a linear imprint of it has been left on the edge of her palm. She switches the radio off and turns her head back to him. She truly doesn't think he was being unkind, but she can't bring herself to ask him. So she says nothing. And he doesn't stop looking at her.

"Brienne," Tyrion eventually says, "would you happen to have some kind of sturdy bag I can use?" He breaks out into a grin which _is_ decidedly wicked. "I'm going to take Jaime's hand on a visit to father. Thought I might stick it up his arse while I'm there." 

Brienne stands, brushing at her jeans nervously, but can't stop herself from smiling a little when she replies, "I'm not sure the hand deserves it."

Tyrion chuckles easily and it gives Brienne hope. Whatever has gone on between him and Jaime, it can't have been that bad. "I really do like you, you know," he says. "Do you happen to have any sisters?"

"Yes, but they're not like me," she says blandly. "They're at beauty school."

Tyrion brightens visibly at this information. "Really?"

"Yes." Brienne walks over and, perhaps unfairly, takes the opportunity to glare down at him quite thoroughly. "Also, they're still quite _young."_

Tyrion throws his hands up in apparent surrender. "Whoa, you can stow the protective mother tiger look! They're off limits. Noted." He shoves himself away from the doorjamb and takes a step back into the hallway. "Could you stop doing world-class looming and get me that bag, do you think?" He bats his eyelashes up at her, for good measure.

Brienne nods and edges past him, turning into the living area, but it is empty and she looks down at Tyrion in concern as he follows her in. Tyrion just points at the open balcony door and Brienne breathes a sigh, this time undeniably one of relief, before heading to grab her canvas shopping bag from a kitchen drawer. 

Tyrion is holding Jaime's prosthetic as awkwardly as Brienne used to when she comes back to him. "It's a bit warm," he whispers, looking revolted at the sensation.

"It's body temperature, when it's switched on," Brienne offers, though she doesn't say how disturbing she too had found it at first. Tyrion drops it into the bag when she holds it open for him. She grabs the cage from where it stands, leaning against her armchair, and puts that in too. "I'd tell you to take it away and burn it, but I don't think somebody else would approve."

"Leave my creepy hand alone. Both of you!" Just the sound of Jaime's voice is enough to push another shuddering breath out of Brienne, because he doesn't sound like anything other than the man she knows so well.

"No," Brienne calls out, relinquishing the bag to Jaime's brother, and glaring at him again for his plain delight at her too obvious reaction.

"I'm afraid the vote is unanimous, in here! I'll be back, Jaime." Tyrion starts to walk towards the front door, though he has a few words to share with Brienne on the way; even if they speak more to his experience of this visit to an area he would likely normally avoid than anything really enlightening to her. "Though I'll hide behind the bloody post box before riding up in the lift with the family who let me in the security door this time around. _Ever_ again. They had about eighteen damned children and I swear only the baby in the pushchair missed the opportunity to tug on my hair in the lift."

"Did the mother have a yellow coat?" she asks, opening the door for him. There is only one family of any size living in this block. They are waiting for their new-build in the suburbs to be completed.

"Yes," Tyrion confirms, stepping back into the world outside.

"Then I'm afraid it was only four children."

"It _felt_ like eighteen!" Tyrion insists as he goes and hits the button to call the lift. But then he looks at her again, this time with seriousness. "Thank you for what you've done for him, Brienne. Have a good evening."

"You too, Tyrion. And no killing." She points at the bag and grimaces. "Or that other thing."

The lift doors open and Tyrion's laughter gets louder as he steps in to it. "You truly are too forgiving, Brienne of Tarth, he calls out to her." I thought you wanted to kill him yourself, not half an hour ago!"

And then he is gone, leaving his brother behind. Slowly, Brienne closes and secures the door, only to realize that she can't spend all of the next few hours staring at the back of it. So she turns and makes her way to the balcony, pausing nervously before stepping out onto it. The floodlights that illuminate the building are now on for the night, meaning that, if anything, it is brighter here now than it was in daytime. Jaime is sitting in his seat, her jumper fully on and his folded newspaper in his left hand, giving the appearance he is casually reading it. 

He's pulled off the hair band that he customarily wears when he visits Brienne at home and it slightly jars seeing it loose and just below shoulder length as she does in her workplace. Because if Jaime Lannister, along with his infamous umbrella, is still thought of as closing on evil by many, it is now universally accepted that his most outstanding and notable feature is that he has hair many would practically die to own for themselves.

Brienne hadn't known until recently that he'd only decided to grow it longer when they became friends, so that if they ever did meet away from the Lost Property Office, he could hide it, lessening his chances of drawing adverse attention to her. He only told her so a few weeks ago, when he'd thrown away the last of the hair grips that held it in place as it grew longer under the quadruple XL hoodies he'd bought to wear on his weekend train rides into the capital. 

Dressed in casual clothes, as if heading for the gym, he's left his home every week and has even gone so far as to shun first class, happy to slump in a seat with the other ordinary travellers in the region. Well, perhaps not quite happy, as his numerous texts mentioning 'peasants' with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek might attest to, but he finds it easy enough. But Brienne is aware that he only passes comment in that way to niggle her anyway and she won't admit to him that she quite enjoys the arrival of these short missives, because they mean he is on his way; and it also gives them something to 'discuss' when he arrives. And she can't deny that his going through that amount of trouble just to see her is touching, even if he has been at pains to tell her that walking through the streets of the city with his head bowed down is no real problem. He claims he actually likes passing through King's Landing unnoticed and that by now, his feet know the way to Chelsted House by themselves.

She is looking at his feet now, under the table, and Brienne is suddenly aware that she can't stand there like a lump until Tyrion comes back again. She moves toward him, but finds herself gathering up the cafetiere and cups, beating a hasty retreat back into the flat. She berates herself for hiding so stupidly even as she puts them into the sink, deciding that staying in the kitchen to make yet more coffee would be cowardly.

It is with no lack of trepidation that she heads back outside, though even as she takes her seat it isn't noted by so much as a flick of a perfect eyebrow. Jaime is still pretending to read and Brienne would be happy to as well, had she any source of reading material herself. But as she does not, she looks out across the Rush, at the mechanical cranes, huge but far shorter than the building in which she sits, shifting containers of wares from the whole known world from steel hulls onto the backs of waiting trucks.

She says nothing, but neither does he.

The air around them, between them, is thick with awkwardness, but Brienne pays it no mind, choosing instead to think about the men working across the water. Perhaps they have worked so much overtime this week as to make them tired. Some of them could have young families, waiting eagerly at home for their return. Or it could be that one of them is new, trying to find out the procedures to follow, how things work in that strange place.

It is only the sound of the newspaper being dropped onto the table again that draws her attention back. And now Jaime _is_ looking at her. "So," he says, very quietly, "we could sit here for the rest of the evening and pretend you didn't hear what Tyrion said. Or, alternatively, we could sit here for the rest of the evening and _not_ pretend you didn't hear what Tyrion said."

It feels like her heart clenches, though Brienne is certain that can't be true. "Jaime, I'm not sure we should - "

"He was right."

She sits there, her mind wiped clean, a pure blank, unsure she hears what there is to be heard, as opposed to what she wants to be told. "I'm sorry?"

Jaime smiles, his own laughter soft, maybe even nervous. "Will you ever stop apologizing to me?" He leans forward, more sharply this time, the impact of his body making one of the legs of the table sing. They almost smile at each other, but can't yet, and he is looking at her. "He was right, Brienne. I love you. I've been in love with you for a long time."

"I...," Brienne's mouth is suddenly dry. It is too much to believe. "This can't be true." It can't be, but her words wound him and she sees it. Jaime stands straight away, every line in his body screaming of hurt as he brushes past her, desperate to be anywhere else but near her. But Brienne simply can't let him leave. _"Jaime!"_ she shouts, panicking the moment she hears one of his feet hit the flooring of the inside of her home, though she doesn't turn to him. She is unable to, even as, when she hears him stop and turn back himself, she looks out over the Blackwater Rush and says, "I'm in love with you too."

"You are?"

"Of course I am!" she asserts, only then noticing how uncertain he sounds and knowing why he must be. She twists in her seat to face him. "How could I _not_ be?"

Jaime is, as she might have expected, leaning against the door jamb, but not in a way she's ever seen before. Only his forehead is in contact with it, bowed, eyes closed, his face otherwise caught in the purest relief. But after a few seconds, he turns his face to hers, though not far enough for his brow to lose contact with white painted wood, as if he is gaining strength from it. When he speaks, his voice is softer, deeper than she has ever heard it. "Let's go to bed."

"I'm sorry?"

"What did I say about apologizing?" he says, but then he swallows, as if with great difficulty, and turns his face away again. "You don't want to."

"No. I...yes! Of course I want to." Brienne just waits for him to re-emerge then, already sure that she does want this, wants him, and that right now is fine for her. She has dreamed of holding him and being held by him so often by now that she knows she never wants the empty ache that awaits her waking without him again. Not without ever knowing what it is truly like to be with him. There is no-one in the world she knows better, or loves better, and she can't think of any reason, bar one, to delay. And so it is that, when he comes back to her, his face beginning to move from wretchedness to a slowly-widening smile, she can only shrug shyly. "I just don't have any birth control, Jaime. And the local shop will be closed by now."

"Ah," he sighs, straightening up and stepping fully back outside, closing some of the short distance between them. "Well, we don't have to have sex, Brienne. Or at least fuck. I can think of a number of different ways we could try to pass the time until Tyrion gets back with my hand." That smile of his turns practically sinful. "Which might be tomorrow afternoon, from what he was saying. I'd normally be working, but he implied that he wouldn't mind if I threw a sickie. And he has spent a lot of time in Qarth, so - "

"Well, that was a lie. If Tyrion didn't need you, why did he bother finding you here in the first place?" But even whilst Brienne's throwing out the accusation, it all becomes clear to her. "Oh, I see. He's meddling with us."

"Mmm-hmm," Jaime nods. "But then, Brienne, do you want to be unmeddled, in this case?" Just to add some heft to this question, he reaches across and runs his forefinger down the side of her arm, if only for a few inches.

Brienne nearly gasps out loud at that alone, and smiles up at him. "No."

"Good," Jaime says, holding his hand out to her. "Brienne, let's go to bed." 

For a few seconds yet, Brienne sits there, unmoving, just feeling the thrum of anticipation coiling within her body. But then she stands, taking Jaime's hand, and lets herself be led inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
